Battlesnake returns

When I started with coding in 2019 I got almost immediately intrigued by the idea of programming BOTs, game AI and other agents. Some time later I was introduced to Codingame (other post?) and then last year, 2021, someone promoted Battlesnake at their discord channel. It got me interested immediately because of its different nature compare to other platforms - you do not submit your code to a server, you make the server…

It’s an API

I found battlesnake amazing - simple rules for anyone to understand, yet complex enough to be highly competitive. Own API means wider variety of possibilities - language, execution, frameworks, crates, module etc. the choice is your.

This also means much larger opportunity to learn new and useful skills as a starting programmer. The most obvious is basics of devops, server management and CI/CD if you want to be efficient. Then there’s the api interface itself.

what have I learned and why every starting coder should embrace bot programming

• rust

• api

• deployment CI/CD basics

• server management

• async to be continued

• naive algos

Battlesnake 2022

I didn’t have time to progress through 2021 season, even the finals of Summer League were heavily affected by my other responsibilities. However with the new season I decided to dedicate some regular times to learn new things through battlesnake. My plan is to continuously improve and develop, fully transparent and open sourced battlesnake, attempt to write some blog posts about it or perhaps even stream a bit. Why open sourced? Well I do like winning, but my main goal is to learn and have fun. And anyone is welcome to tag along, ask questions, give tips, criticise my spaghetti rust and whatnot. I cannot promise consistency as I’m obliged to my 1,5yrs old daughter more than to anything else, but I’ll do my best.

Conclusion

Battlesnake is awesome, 2022 season will be fun and I (or we?) get to learn bunch of new things

Other post describing the current state of the snake should be here.

Here’s direct link to repo, and I’ll try to come up with some posts and streaming schedule soon