nihonjinrxs / hangman

Hangman game created during @pragdave's Elixir for Programmers 2 course

Hangman, with PragDave

This app was me walking my way through @pragdave's Elixir for Programmers 2 hands-on course project.

Some challenges to take on later (from his suggested projects, that I put off for later):

1. Add a computer player

(Difficult) If you'd like an interesting challenge, write another application where the computer plays the hangman game. For a simple implementation you could just blindly guess letters, starting at the most frequent.

You could then optimize it by looking at the possible words. You'll need to add a new API function to the dictionary to return all the words of a given length. You can then use that list to decide which letter will give you the most information based on the current game state.

2. Make Cached Fibonacci use Applications

(Non-trivial…) Two chapters ago, you wrote a cache for a Fibonacci calculator using an agent. That cache was started each time we did a calculation. Rewrite the cache as an application, so that it persists across calls to the Fibonacci calculator. This will involve creating a project for it.

Then create another project for the code that does the Fibonacci calculation. Add the cache as a dependency, and verify that is correctly caches between calls to fib.

Is there anything stopping you from using the cache module anywhere you need a transient key-value store?

Is the cache preserved if you exit the main Fibonacci calculator and restart it? Can you explain your answer?

3. Put Hangman code into a single file instead of impl and runtime

Create a new throwaway branch in your copy of the Hangman project, and reorganize it so that the API, implementation, and GenServer stuff is all in a single source file.

Go through that file and make every function definition that isn't an API or a GenServer callback private. This is the way people would write this type of server.

Now update the tests to get them working.

4. Track new node connections and disconnections from the Hangman application/server

(Slightly tricky) In a temporary branch, modify the Hangman application to record the number of new games that have been created, outputting the total when it gets updated.

(Tricky) Can you record the name of each node as it connects, and write out the current list on each connection?

(++Tricky) Can you find a way to monitor when a connected client goes away, and remove that node from the list you keep?