This post is more of a personal aspiration than advice, my apologies.

I have a personal GitHub profile. I created it because I’d like to build some useful scripts and share a portfolio of coding examples. At the moment I’m particularly interested in Chris Lovejoy’s YouTube Algorithm (The Internet Archive Wayback Machine version) and would like to build a version of it. However my Python skills are elementary and I’ve never used a service like AWS Lamda to schedule code (saved in GitHub) to run on a weekly basis. So that is very much a stretch goal.

Unfortunately I have a conflicting goal that’s higher priority: To reduce the amount of time I sit in a chair in front of computer during evenings and weekends. Life is short and I want to get out in the great outdoors as much as I can. We all take our physical abilities for granted most days. As I write this post at least I’m standing at my homemade Vancouver Island cedar standing desk. That’s a preliminary attempt to balance those two goals.

Balancing those goals might benefit from tech like:

• Augmented Reality technologies (e.g. Pokemon Go, etc.), and
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) (e.g. Echo Silver)

It would be great to be able to go for a walk and write code using voice commands and gestures while also getting my steps in.

But perhaps gyms might be a safer place for coding games like that… They might also have an easy path-to-market, because they might be able to associate specific machines, free weights, medicine balls, etc. with specific functions in a framework / library…? Like a mash up of Nintendo Switch’s Ring Fit and Game Builder Garage, but in a real gym! There’s even the potential for collaborative coding as people try to share a piece of equipment (or spot each other?) to acquire/access a function?

It would be a complicated game to create, and it wouldn’t appeal to all personality types, but maybe there’s an idea there if you kept brainstorming… I do think a team building exercise, where people use Virtual Reality (VR) devices and gym equipment to automate a routine business process, could be fun even it was a bit chaotic. It seems much more useful than an escape room or an obstacle course.

If you have a great method of keeping your heart rate up while you also learn to write code, please let me know how you do that in the comments below!