I'd see this more as trying to teach the computational thinking mindset. The idea of trying to create complex behaviours from simple rulesets (and trying to wo

I'd see this more as trying to teach the computational thinking mindset. The idea of trying to create complex behaviours from simple rulesets (and trying to work out why it doesn't work when things go wrong!). The rules themselves don't matter too much. Turing completeness means you can happy they'll be a vast range of complex behaviours to explore.