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Ask HN: Anyone teaching young children programming through Minecraft?
I had naïvely assumed the Minecraft Hour of Code was the first of many modules that continued onwards in the same direction, but was surprised to discover that the Designer and Adventurer modules are the only ones available. This led to a question I posed in /r/minecraft, and a brief reply that confirmed [1], that indeed there isn't something like Hour of Code that continues past the two modules.
Before I re-invent the wheel that someone else has already built because my Google-fu failed to reveal someone else's project that has already trod this path, has anyone else here built a simplistic syntax on top of a Python API library to Minecraft, and set it up in a simple REPL? Extras would be a pre-built world that acts as a platform for puzzles, and a Lispy syntax, but as long as I'm not duplicating someone else's efforts, I'll do what I can for my child.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/6ib4kx/is_there_a_launcherclient_that_players_can_only/
- oblib 9y agoI cannot answer your question directly but the Raspberry Pi Foundation has put together some stuff and if you're planning on jumping into this arena you might want to look into working with them. https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/getting-started-with-minecraft-pi/worksheet/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/getting-started-with-mi...
- TigerDragonBaba 9y agoYep, thanks for that pointer, I'm pretty much doing that, except on Debian Linux. I was surprised there wasn't a Minecraft server or client out there that let me control through an administrative layer a toggle switch to let players interact exclusively through the Python interface, or also let the keyboard and mouse drive input, or exclusively the keyboard and mouse ("classic mode", so to speak). I'm also surprised that no Young Lady's Primer-style worlds of interlocking puzzles haven't been constructed, or even started, that I could locate through searching. There are highly episodic one-shots, or relatively brief arcs, but I haven't seen any really involved worlds accreting complex storylines, continuity, and character development as the children work out puzzles teaching and reinforcing concepts and skills with them. Once children get engaged into a story, at least my son and his peers get extremely motivated to solve the puzzles and they fatigue on failure far later, like an order of magnitude or longer.
- abrax3141 9y agoThis isn't a lispy syntax, but it is teaching a young kid ... if young = 8y.o.: https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/2016/12/20/pythoncraft-chasing-the-sort-front/ https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/2016/12/20/pythoncraft-c... (lots of other examples in this blog) I agree that a lisp would be way better than either the internal command block language, or the ugly python hack.
- abrax3141 9y agoBTW, A lisp would be great. Why not just rewrite the raspy thing in ccl, or some other lw lisp?