8 ms·

I am personally very uncomfortable with introducing children to programming using Minecraft---sure, it has some benefits, but it's teaching them to embrace a pr

I am personally very uncomfortable with introducing children to programming using Minecraft---sure, it has some benefits, but it's teaching them to embrace a proprietary platform that tells them that they cannot study or modify the source code. Support for modding does not count. What children need to be introduced to is software and an operating system where you can "mod" _everything_, and expect to be able to! _That_ is a practical skill and a powerful foundation. Children should be encouraged to adopt free software. Replacements like Minetest exist, and they also have a strong modding community. I'd recommend people instead invest their time creating excellent mods for Minetest and bring it up to par with the features of Minecraft. I will be introducing my son to Minetest soon (he's four) before he gets into Kindergarten and his peers start talking about Minecraft and pressure him into a world of proprietary software. I would rather him talk to his friends about Minetest and encourage them to play with him. There are also many other projects that aim to teach children programming. Proprietary software is incompatible with education. rms has talked at length about these issues; I encourage others to consider his perspective: https://www.gnu.org/education/education.en.html https://www.gnu.org/education/education.en.html https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important...

hacker_9 11y ago
I think you've missed the point entirely here. Minecraft is a popular game that kids would play anyway, so if they can involve the game in an educational sense then it's a win win.
- mikegerwitz 11y ago
  I haven't, and I reject that premise---it is not a win-win, because I don't believe they should be playing it (and other proprietary games) to begin with, and I certainly don't want them to use it as an educational platform upon which they'll build their foundation. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to kids learning something when playing games. I'm proud that my kids play and learn from free games---an walk around the house repeating things from, say, gcompris. They're young (two and four), and I'll be challenging myself to keep up with their need for learning as they age and require more sophisticated games and learning tools.
  - hacker_9 11y ago
    People need money to live, people make money from proprietary games. People also invest that money and make even better games. It's not practical to only limit yourself to OSS. When I went to school years ago they used to have us do computer assessments using custom built software that emulated excel, word etc. The result? All my class mates knew how to use this internal software that no company actually used. So they couldn't even say they knew how to use MS Office, and they really couldn't because the layout of the program was completely different. You are mixing your OSS ideals with the reality of life. Your kids don't care that Minecraft is proprietary or not. Instead they care that they play the same games as their social circle, and can impress others by building things in those games.
    - mikegerwitz 11y ago
      > People need money to live, people make money from proprietary games. People also invest that money and make even better games. It's not practical to only limit yourself to OSS. Of course it is. The whole point of the free software movement is to demand freedom for all users. If you are implying it is not possible to go through life without using exclusively free software for your personal computing, then that's simply false---many, including myself, reject proprietary software entirely. Using proprietary software on behalf of your employer is different. You're not being robbed of your freedoms because you're not doing your own computing---your employer is being robbed of those freedoms. The argument that it's not possible to make money developing free software is an often used one and is simply false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc... (I don't endorse a number of the methods on that page.)
      - vvanders 11y ago
        You show an awfully naive view of the games industry if you think that giving away games for free is going to generate enough income to feed yourself and your family. I learned to program on "proprietary" software(quake, half-life) among other things while I was growing up and it didn't hamper my ability to be an effective software developer.
VLM 11y ago
Computercraft mod gives you LUA programmed turtles with impressive levels of programability. Its fairly bare metal. Its not like you're running "mine.tunnel" and it does all the work for you, you have to program every little detail of movement or activity. Its not like LUA or LUA inspired, it is LUA so you get functions and real control flow. I find it mildly amusing to program for my mining turtle to dig a large transport tunnel for me and line it with torch on the wall every X blocks and double tracked rails along the bottom and collect the goodies for me. This is not exactly the pinnacle of software development, but it is fun, which is all that counts. Its also fun to emulate quarries and deep mining operations with programmed turtles. They come in handy for weird automations also. My son watched the now ancient direwolf20 youtube mod spotlight on computercraft but had no motivation to run it himself. He's more an arduino kid, which is OK I guess. (just to save time, insert here "LUA is not a real programming language", and insert here "I don't care its more of a programming language than watching youtube unboxing videos") Computercraft is not unique, its just the oldest and most widespread of its genre. Personally I'd like a LISP in minecraft. Hoist out the guts of computercraft and toss in a nice jvm lisp like clojure ... in my infinite spare time... Assuming someone else hasn't already... Minetest might be cooler sooner than you think. Its hard to speak for the community, but most see it as only a matter of time before MS kills minecraft modding a monetization scheme or abandonment of the java platform or who knows, at which point the mod authors and players will be salivating for something like minetest. The problem with minetest is nobody mods it so you can't program a turtle in LUA on minetest, only minecraft.
- infinite8s 11y ago
  Logo would make an excellent programming language for Minecraft (adapted to add a few extra base commands for digging - laying down a block would be equivalent to pen down). I wonder if anybody has tried to integrate the two of them!
  - DanBC 11y ago
    That would be great. Here's a "graphics turtle": http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/07/minecraft-fractal-trees.html http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/07/minecraft-fractal-tree... Here's Rust and LLVM in Minecraft command blocks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/37dkg4/sbbm_scripting_in_vanilla_minecraft_with_rust_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/37dkg4/sbbm_scri... Here's someone hacking gnuplots into Minecraft worlds: https://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/hacking-a-gnuplot-into-minecraft/ https://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/hacki...
creshal 11y ago
Minecraft doesn't even have any support for modding, external modding APIs are built by the community by reverse engineering the binaries' bytecode.
- drdeca 11y ago
  To add onto that: They used to say that they were in the process of making an API, but I think they stopped with that.
- sheepdestroyer 11y ago
  It will be a different edition on a new C++ code base. Presumably with ease of extending/use for teaching in mind too. See previous discussion here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10974036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10974036
  - patja 11y ago
    I wish there were more details about what the plans are for this grand new version that will make it better for use in the classroom. The FUD around this change is causing much hand-wringing among educators already invested in Minecraft in the classroom via MinecraftEDU. For example, the question of "will it even run on a Mac" has yet to be answered (that I'm aware of), a big risky unknown for all of the schools that swallowed the Apple educational marketing hook line and sinker. Then there are the licensing terms which are likely to be many multiples of the current Minecraft licensing costs for schools (just going to one license per named student will at least quintuple my school's costs)
panglott 11y ago
The most important thing for education is simply getting the attention of the kids. Once you have their attention, you can get them to tinker and play and learn. But until you actually have their attention, it's all "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink." Free software is important, but explicating GNU orthodoxy to kids is about the worst possible way to actually get them out there playing with technology.
- mikegerwitz 11y ago
  > Free software is important, but explicating GNU orthodoxy to kids is about the worst possible way to actually get them out there playing with technology. The that sentence should end before "but". Free software is _essential_, and any software that would deny those freedoms is, we believe, unethical. You are operating under the premise that there is not enough free software out there to serve as a foundation, and that proprietary software is necessary for children to get "out there playing with technology". That is simply untrue. By accepting that and avoiding discussion of freedom, the problem perpetuates. People simply don't think about these issues---when I begin having discussions with my kids' school district about free software and education, do I expect that more than perhaps one or two people---if any---have even heard of free software or given thought to this? I do not.
  - asiekierka 11y ago
    It sounds blissful, yes, but then there are many serious problems with that when applied to the concept of someone growing up: All their friends are most likely using websites running propietary client-side code to communicate, enjoying their time playing propietary games on propietary operating systems. This approach reminds me of how very conservative parents bar their children from anything which might corrupt them due to not being right with their beliefs - the problem with that, however, is by barring them from potentially going in that direction, you also bar them from ever figuring out on their own what's wrong with the things they say are wrong. In other words, they're, in my view, more likely to not understand the issue with propietary software if they never experience it first-hand. Orthodoxy is one way to live life, but for a growing organism it might be more harmful than anything. I mean, at a young age, are they going to understand that they can't play with their friends because the software they're using is not available under a freedom-ensuring license? Or that they can't talk to them on propietary websites? Or are they, instead, going to rebel - and potentially develop a lifetime grudge against the whole idea of free software?
asiekierka 11y ago
I tried making Minecraft-quality mods for Minetest and the API just wasn't there and... I stand somewhat corrected. Some of the features I wished were there are now there, but not all. So it is moving forward.
Angostura 11y ago
> Proprietary software is incompatible with education. That's an astonishingly sweeping statement. I learned to programme over 30 years ago using the proprietary ZX-Spectrum basic. In what way was I not educated? Meanwhile my kids taught themselves all about the creation of logic gates using redstone dust and pressure switches in Minecraft to control their roller-coaster layouts.
- mikegerwitz 11y ago
  Please see the link that I provided; it's not that people can't _learn_ with proprietary software; that's obviously not the case at all. I learned to program on a proprietary operating system with a proprietary language---Visual Basic---when I was ten years old. And I was taught that sharing was bad. I distributed some code to others, but when I wrote some actually useful software, it was proprietary, and nobody saw the source code. I didn't know about free software until after I started using GNU/Linux; I noticed that a game's "binary" (Frozen Bubble) was the source code---a python script. It amazed me, and I didn't entirely understand why. But I loved that I could hack it and make changes to it. I've lived on both ends.

hacker_9 11y ago

I think you've missed the point entirely here. Minecraft is a popular game that kids would play anyway, so if they can involve the game in an educational sense then it's a win win.

mikegerwitz 11y ago
I haven't, and I reject that premise---it is not a win-win, because I don't believe they should be playing it (and other proprietary games) to begin with, and I certainly don't want them to use it as an educational platform upon which they'll build their foundation. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to kids learning something when playing games. I'm proud that my kids play and learn from free games---an walk around the house repeating things from, say, gcompris. They're young (two and four), and I'll be challenging myself to keep up with their need for learning as they age and require more sophisticated games and learning tools.
- hacker_9 11y ago
  People need money to live, people make money from proprietary games. People also invest that money and make even better games. It's not practical to only limit yourself to OSS. When I went to school years ago they used to have us do computer assessments using custom built software that emulated excel, word etc. The result? All my class mates knew how to use this internal software that no company actually used. So they couldn't even say they knew how to use MS Office, and they really couldn't because the layout of the program was completely different. You are mixing your OSS ideals with the reality of life. Your kids don't care that Minecraft is proprietary or not. Instead they care that they play the same games as their social circle, and can impress others by building things in those games.
  - mikegerwitz 11y ago
    > People need money to live, people make money from proprietary games. People also invest that money and make even better games. It's not practical to only limit yourself to OSS. Of course it is. The whole point of the free software movement is to demand freedom for all users. If you are implying it is not possible to go through life without using exclusively free software for your personal computing, then that's simply false---many, including myself, reject proprietary software entirely. Using proprietary software on behalf of your employer is different. You're not being robbed of your freedoms because you're not doing your own computing---your employer is being robbed of those freedoms. The argument that it's not possible to make money developing free software is an often used one and is simply false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc... (I don't endorse a number of the methods on that page.)
    - vvanders 11y ago
      You show an awfully naive view of the games industry if you think that giving away games for free is going to generate enough income to feed yourself and your family. I learned to program on "proprietary" software(quake, half-life) among other things while I was growing up and it didn't hamper my ability to be an effective software developer.

VLM 11y ago

Computercraft mod gives you LUA programmed turtles with impressive levels of programability. Its fairly bare metal. Its not like you're running "mine.tunnel" and it does all the work for you, you have to program every little detail of movement or activity. Its not like LUA or LUA inspired, it is LUA so you get functions and real control flow. I find it mildly amusing to program for my mining turtle to dig a large transport tunnel for me and line it with torch on the wall every X blocks and double tracked rails along the bottom and collect the goodies for me. This is not exactly the pinnacle of software development, but it is fun, which is all that counts. Its also fun to emulate quarries and deep mining operations with programmed turtles. They come in handy for weird automations also. My son watched the now ancient direwolf20 youtube mod spotlight on computercraft but had no motivation to run it himself. He's more an arduino kid, which is OK I guess. (just to save time, insert here "LUA is not a real programming language", and insert here "I don't care its more of a programming language than watching youtube unboxing videos") Computercraft is not unique, its just the oldest and most widespread of its genre. Personally I'd like a LISP in minecraft. Hoist out the guts of computercraft and toss in a nice jvm lisp like clojure ... in my infinite spare time... Assuming someone else hasn't already... Minetest might be cooler sooner than you think. Its hard to speak for the community, but most see it as only a matter of time before MS kills minecraft modding a monetization scheme or abandonment of the java platform or who knows, at which point the mod authors and players will be salivating for something like minetest. The problem with minetest is nobody mods it so you can't program a turtle in LUA on minetest, only minecraft.

infinite8s 11y ago
Logo would make an excellent programming language for Minecraft (adapted to add a few extra base commands for digging - laying down a block would be equivalent to pen down). I wonder if anybody has tried to integrate the two of them!
- DanBC 11y ago
  That would be great. Here's a "graphics turtle": http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/07/minecraft-fractal-trees.html http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/07/minecraft-fractal-tree... Here's Rust and LLVM in Minecraft command blocks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/37dkg4/sbbm_scripting_in_vanilla_minecraft_with_rust_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/37dkg4/sbbm_scri... Here's someone hacking gnuplots into Minecraft worlds: https://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/hacking-a-gnuplot-into-minecraft/ https://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/hacki...

creshal 11y ago

Minecraft doesn't even have any support for modding, external modding APIs are built by the community by reverse engineering the binaries' bytecode.

drdeca 11y ago
To add onto that: They used to say that they were in the process of making an API, but I think they stopped with that.
sheepdestroyer 11y ago
It will be a different edition on a new C++ code base. Presumably with ease of extending/use for teaching in mind too. See previous discussion here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10974036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10974036
- patja 11y ago
  I wish there were more details about what the plans are for this grand new version that will make it better for use in the classroom. The FUD around this change is causing much hand-wringing among educators already invested in Minecraft in the classroom via MinecraftEDU. For example, the question of "will it even run on a Mac" has yet to be answered (that I'm aware of), a big risky unknown for all of the schools that swallowed the Apple educational marketing hook line and sinker. Then there are the licensing terms which are likely to be many multiples of the current Minecraft licensing costs for schools (just going to one license per named student will at least quintuple my school's costs)

panglott 11y ago

The most important thing for education is simply getting the attention of the kids. Once you have their attention, you can get them to tinker and play and learn. But until you actually have their attention, it's all "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink." Free software is important, but explicating GNU orthodoxy to kids is about the worst possible way to actually get them out there playing with technology.

mikegerwitz 11y ago
> Free software is important, but explicating GNU orthodoxy to kids is about the worst possible way to actually get them out there playing with technology. The that sentence should end before "but". Free software is _essential_, and any software that would deny those freedoms is, we believe, unethical. You are operating under the premise that there is not enough free software out there to serve as a foundation, and that proprietary software is necessary for children to get "out there playing with technology". That is simply untrue. By accepting that and avoiding discussion of freedom, the problem perpetuates. People simply don't think about these issues---when I begin having discussions with my kids' school district about free software and education, do I expect that more than perhaps one or two people---if any---have even heard of free software or given thought to this? I do not.
- asiekierka 11y ago
  It sounds blissful, yes, but then there are many serious problems with that when applied to the concept of someone growing up: All their friends are most likely using websites running propietary client-side code to communicate, enjoying their time playing propietary games on propietary operating systems. This approach reminds me of how very conservative parents bar their children from anything which might corrupt them due to not being right with their beliefs - the problem with that, however, is by barring them from potentially going in that direction, you also bar them from ever figuring out on their own what's wrong with the things they say are wrong. In other words, they're, in my view, more likely to not understand the issue with propietary software if they never experience it first-hand. Orthodoxy is one way to live life, but for a growing organism it might be more harmful than anything. I mean, at a young age, are they going to understand that they can't play with their friends because the software they're using is not available under a freedom-ensuring license? Or that they can't talk to them on propietary websites? Or are they, instead, going to rebel - and potentially develop a lifetime grudge against the whole idea of free software?

asiekierka 11y ago

I tried making Minecraft-quality mods for Minetest and the API just wasn't there and... I stand somewhat corrected. Some of the features I wished were there are now there, but not all. So it is moving forward.

Angostura 11y ago

> Proprietary software is incompatible with education. That's an astonishingly sweeping statement. I learned to programme over 30 years ago using the proprietary ZX-Spectrum basic. In what way was I not educated? Meanwhile my kids taught themselves all about the creation of logic gates using redstone dust and pressure switches in Minecraft to control their roller-coaster layouts.

mikegerwitz 11y ago
Please see the link that I provided; it's not that people can't _learn_ with proprietary software; that's obviously not the case at all. I learned to program on a proprietary operating system with a proprietary language---Visual Basic---when I was ten years old. And I was taught that sharing was bad. I distributed some code to others, but when I wrote some actually useful software, it was proprietary, and nobody saw the source code. I didn't know about free software until after I started using GNU/Linux; I noticed that a game's "binary" (Frozen Bubble) was the source code---a python script. It amazed me, and I didn't entirely understand why. But I loved that I could hack it and make changes to it. I've lived on both ends.