Comment by eru
1 day ago
> This kind of limited device is something I've been thinking about with respect to what interactions I want my children to have with computers. I remember when I was 9 years old and we got these computers at the lab at school and we wrote some LOGO and BASIC and it was a mind-blowing experience. We were drawing SQUARES! And we were making TRIANGLES of ASTERISKS! Hahaha, what a glorious thing that felt like.
Well, Minecraft 'redstone' works a bit like that?
Of course, it's embedded in a much bigger program, but I'm not sure that makes a difference to the kids?
I don't think comparing redstone to something like BASIC is fair. Redstone is easy to get started with but actually making something interesting with it is significantly more complicated. Minecraft Education edition is a better example where you can use Python or something like Scratch to interact with the game.
Perhaps redstone is a bad example, I don't play Mindcraft [sic].
If you don't, redstone isn't like programming, it's like assembling a few logic gates for simple automation.
Or a few thousand logic gates for complex automation, but then it will run in slideshow mode or crash.