Circle of Mad Libs

Monday 11 March 2019 — This is almost six years old. Be careful.

Sometimes you find an unexpected real-world connection even in the geekiest of places. I (nedbat) was hanging out in the #python IRC channel on Freenode, and I recommended to someone that they write a Mad Libs game for a project.

Calvin Spealman (aka ironfroggy) chimed in:

[ironfroggy] didn't you write a madlibs python blog post like... forever ago?
    [nedbat] yes :)  14 years ago I think.
    [nedbat] my son was 13, and he just turned 27...
[ironfroggy] nedbat: fun fact: i read that when my wife was pregnant.
[ironfroggy] my son turns 13 in a few weeks.
[ironfroggy] we make games together now
    [nedbat] :) i like the symmetry

My post from 14 years ago is Programming madlibs, written based on a project I did with my then 13-year-old. To think that Calvin read it on the brink of becoming a father, and now has a son the same age that mine was then, is mind-bending.

It’s kind of like a circle of life or something, but I guess it’s just a circle of Mad Libs, which is still good.

Comments

[gravatar]
Claudio 12:11 PM on 12 Mar 2019
Nice! I've been trying to think of things to get my 12 yro interested in logic and programming, and the "code hour" puzzles don't appeal much to him. I loved this and will try it out, I can also get the 8 yro daughter interested as the test subject for the program executions :)

Oh, and incidentally, if I don't get around trying this in the next few months, he'll be 13 by the time we sit down to do it; I'm almost tempted to wait a bit just for that reason, LOL!

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