What type of people are or will be good at coding?

The type who like

thinking (intellectual),

making things (creative),

solving problems and puzzles (detective mindset),

doing (executive mindset),

improving (achievement motivation after Gordon Allport),

learning forever (intelligent).

An example incorporating all of the above is found in Baba is you game.

To draw parallels (showing which aspects reflect which numbers above), we could say:

you should want to

play the game. (It will get quite hard!*). 4, 1

improve your time (solve it faster). 5

use different ways to solve the same. 2

not give up when you’re stuck. 1, 3

tinker with possible ways to start solving and carry that knowledge into subsequent puzzles. 6

An example will make this clear.

Having conquered the preliminary chapter, I enter the lake:

And enter puzzle 1 in the lake, Icy Waters:

The white thingy is the Baba. It can be moved with up-down-right-left keys. Here are some conventions:

Baba can push things, such as the word BABA, or IS, or YOU, or AND so forth. You can push several if your Baba can stand behind a row of blocks.

It can also push blocks, such as that single block of wall. Or the block called SINK.

WALL IS STOP is a rule. It means walls cannot be moved in this puzzle. It is clear because there is no way for Baba to dismantle that rule sentence.

JELLY IS SINK is saying: if Baba runs into a JELLY it will SINK. But you must get to the yellow flag. How?

It’s like programming which includes debugging.

My cousin’s thought process was:

Let’s try something simple first. I let Baba enter the waters:

Kaboom, it evaporates and takes a few blocks with it too:

Ah, so BABAISYOUANDSINK means as long as this rule is active, Baba will sink when entering water blocks. Let’s dismantle this rule:

Now Baba can safely reach the WALL block. The SINK block is also useful and can be moved. So let’s move them together like so:

Now we experiment again. Since anything touching the jellies will explode, we push these two blocks into them, clearing one jelly with WALL:

That leaves us with SINK block. Push this too:

Now the coast is clear. Now Baba enters for the flag:

But I did it much faster (since programming can sharpen the mind):

Directly pushing the WALL block is enough if you approach the flag from the left side!

That was an easy level just so everybody can understand the game, but just one more level above this, The Island, becomes quite difficult.

This below is Island, level 1. You can move the flag with FLAGISPUSH but nothing happens. BABAISROCK and BABAISFLAG both fail. WALLISSTOP removed can help you move freely; FLAGISROCK then ROCKISWIN also won’t work. What will you do?

Solution: BABAISWIN ;)

* hard? Well, just two levels up in the Island Collection we get this: