But at the same time it seems to casually reduce Notch's effort to "used perlin noise". He didn't need perlin noise per-se; there are countless of other terrain

But at the same time it seems to casually reduce Notch's effort to "used perlin noise". He didn't need perlin noise per-se; there are countless of other terrain generation techniques. But perlin noise, in part, made minecraft what it is today, that's true.