A programming game is a computer game where the player has no direct influence on the course of the game. Instead, a computer program or script is written in some domain-specific programming language in order to control the actions of the characters (usually robots, tanks or bacteria, which seek to destroy each other). Most programming games can be considered environments of digital organisms, related to artificial life simulations.

A few programming games of note include AI Wars, Core War, and RoboWar, among many others.

There are different tournaments and leagues for the programming games where the characters can compete with each other. Usually a script is optimized for a special strategy.

Programming games may be derived from almost any other type of game. For example, the World Computer Chess Championship consists of matches between programs written for the abstract strategy game of chess. Also, some non-computer games borrow elements of programming games; in the board game RoboRally, players arrange cards to "program" their pieces with a sequence of moves, causing moves to be made without the knowledge of one's opponents' preceding moves.

Michael Abrash is a game programmer and technical writer specializing in optimization and 80x86 assembly language programming, a reputation cemented by his 1990 book Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge. Related issues were covered in his later book Zen of Graphics Programming. He frequently begins a technical discussion with an anecdote that draws parallels between a real-life experience he has had, and the article's subject matter. His prose encourages readers to think outside the box and to approach solving technical problems in an innovative way.

Before getting into technical writing, Abrash was a game programmer in the early days of the IBM PC. His first commercial game, Space Strike, released in 1982, was a PC booter. He co-authored several PC games with Dan Illowsky who previously wrote Snack Attack for the Apple II. Abrash and Illowsky worked together on Cosmic Crusader (1982), Big Top (1983), and Snack Attack II..

After working at Microsoft on graphics and assembly code for Windows NT 3.1, he returned to the game industry in the mid-1990s to work on Quake for id Software. Meantime, Abrash also worked on the popular game Doom. Some of the technology behind Quake is documented in Abrash's Ramblings in Realtime published on the Dr. Dobb's Journal. After Quake was released, Abrash returned to Microsoft to work on natural language research, then moved to the Xbox team, until 2001.