One: embarrassingly, I never really fully wrapped my head around the concept of a Turing machine. But the doodle allowed an enjoyable environment to experiment it, learn, and appreciate what they are.
Two: After seeing such an example I realized how much room there may be in Gamificating (no idea if that's the word I want) programming. I.E. framing game play elements around programming and its concepts to make the act of learning less painful, more enjoyable, and more compelling.
To borrow the first line in the Wikipedia page:
I'm currently imagining having an environment or even an unadulterated computer game which can use situations or puzzles to introduce programming concepts and eventually to encourage experimentation. In the Turing machine Google doodle I was a little disappointed that there were only two sets of puzzles and it didn't give you room to start manually placing instructions. On the good side I was already having all sorts of ideas of things I could do beyond what the puzzles showed, so maybe mission accomplished. Because even if a game only fostered enough excitement for someone to jump into python/c++/whatever to begin designing their own programs then it would have been successful.Gamification is the use of game design techniques, game thinking and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts.
Below I've included links to the Wikipedia entry and to an episode from a web show called Extra Credits which speaks on the topic of Gamification, it's relevance in today's world, the benefits, and the downfalls.
Any thoughts? I think such a project could fit very nicely in the Raspberry Pi paradigm.