
New Minecraft Mod Teaches You Code as You Play - coderfish
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/learntomod/
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dups
Nice!

Also of note is a mod called Computer Craft, that adds Lua programmable
computers and devices into the game (touchscreens, turtles!) as well as a set
of APIs for interacting with various aspects of the game.

[http://www.computercraft.info/](http://www.computercraft.info/)

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asgard1024
Yes, that's what most people tend to use for programming these days.

Although I personally have never enjoyed it as much as the famous Redpower 2
mod, which had computers as well, with 6502 assembler and Forth. It was less
forgiving than Lua, but somehow more fitting the genre (of construction set,
that is); programming in Lua feels almost like you could program the thing in
Java and put it in a new block.

I also liked the logic gates and other stuff that came with RP2, I think
that's good for kids to play with as well. Too bad Eloraam stopped developing
RP2, it was the best mod for Minecraft ever.

(Also, CC computers seem to reset on world reload, while RP2 computers were
persistent. They are also dirt cheap compared to RP2, and their runtime
behavior is not well specified. I just kinda feel that CC computers break the
fourth wall of the virtual world, in several different ways..)

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Houshalter
The main advantage of computer craft is turtles, programmable robots. You can
automate all sorts of things in the game and it's fun. Automating things with
redpower is possible, but takes massive complicated contraptions and great
feats of engineering.

~~~
asgard1024
Again, I actually find frames both more useful and more fun. In my final days
of 1.2.5 world (which was more or less with RP2 as only tech mod), I had total
3 vehicles of my own design:
[http://integratedredstone.wikispaces.com/6-directional+Movin...](http://integratedredstone.wikispaces.com/6-directional+Moving+Platform+Tutorial)

One was used for mining, other for paving, and third had attached two 7x5x7
trailers, one was mobile house with basic facilities and the other was mobile
Thaumcraft 2 lab.

But most things can be automated quite easily with frames, and I find it more
intuitive - you just look at it and see what it does when it's done.

I also later designed a fully programmable factory using RP2, Buildcraft
crafting table and a conveyor belt.

I am glad to hear that Eloraam started working on RP again. I hope I will be
able to design von Neumann machine in RP, eventually (that's my ultimate goal,
but there are several blocks still missing in RP, so it's not yet doable). At
the very least, next time I play I want to have a full base on a moving
platform (may be of several independent "trucks"), so I could easily move all
stuff I have somewhere else in the world. :-)

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ndrake
I'm confused. What does the $30 pre-order get you? Is it a subscription
service? Their FAQ [1] mentions a subscription for a private server after the
beta.

1 - [http://www.learntomod.com/faq](http://www.learntomod.com/faq)

~~~
linksbro
Sorry that our pricing model isn't the clearest - we're still bouncing around
ideas for after the beta. The $30 pre-order gets you access to the entire beta
period until we release.

The subscription fee after the beta period is for use of a private server for
you and your friends to use learntomod. Alternatively you can opt for a lower
fee to play on a public learntomod server.

~~~
ndrake
Will people be able to run their own learntomod servers? What happens after
the beta? Would I have to pay more to continue using the software?

~~~
linksbro
Just talked to a few other people and they said -those who preorder get a
guaranteed life-time price of $10/month, regardless of whether we raise the
price for everyone else.

After the beta: we haven't decided on a final pricing system. We're shooting
around ideas of doing a tier system.

And about running your own learntomod server:

At this stage we aren't letting people run their own learntomod server, the
only exception being 3rd party hosting companies that want to make it
available to their users.

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ndrake
Thanks for the info. I'll admit that I probably wouldn't subscribe to such a
service. If it was a fixed price for the software I would definitely buy it
for my kids.

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tombh
Relevant (shameless plug) for my and @kdurrani's implementation of LOGO's
famous Turtles language but in Minecraft and in 3D
[https://github.com/tombh/mc-turtles](https://github.com/tombh/mc-turtles)

We taught Code Club in primary school and Minecraft is the one thing that is
guaranteed to grab and sustain kid's attentions. We actually used it at first
through a Raspberry Pi and unplugged the keyboard and mouse, so the only way
kids could interact with Minecraft was through Python ;)

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thret
Very cool. Get 'em while they're young. I can't imagine kids these days would
copy out games in basic by hand the way I had to on my first computer :)

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DarkTree
As a 22-year-old, I can't believe you ever did that.

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DougWebb
I'm 44, and started programming when I was 12 on a ZX81 and then a
Commodore64. Back then we had magazines instead of the internet, and any
serious program was written in assembly rather than BASIC. One of the more
advanced things the magazines did was print out hex dumps of the machine code,
with a checksum on each line, and there was a program (which you had to enter
manually) that would let you type in those hex dumps. It would checksum each
line as you went along and warn you if the checksum you entered didn't match
the checksum of the bytes you entered. That was a huge improvement over just
typing in the programs, because you knew you didn't have any typos.

Many, many hours were spent typing those programs in. I'm still really good at
typing with one hand while the other is used to point at what I'm typing in.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
On the Altair 8800 we had to toggle in the hex bytes using switches on the
front panel! Ha!

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ausjke
Minecraft is very popular among kids, however I tried hard to deny my kids to
play that. Instead I redirect them to program in python and processing and
javascript, that might be more boring but they can play whatever games they
built themselves using the 'real' programming language. So far it worked well.
I always wondered how beneficial Minecraft(and the new code Mod) could be to
kids? I dared not to let them play as I was told it's too addictive for
kids...

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erbo
How about playing _with_ your kids? I have a private Minecraft server set up
where I, my fiancee, our godsons, and their mother all collaborate. We use a
custom-assembled modpack with a _lot_ of different options; my fiancee has
been learning to breed trees and bees (Forestry mod), while I've got a nuclear
reactor going (IndustrialCraft 2 mod) and am starting to design a rail system
(RailCraft mod), and one of our godsons has been building fancy houses,
furnished with add-ons from BiblioCraft and MrCrayfish's Furniture Mod.

~~~
kawera
Would love to setup a server to play with my daughters too. Could you point me
to some resources on how to do it?

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erbo
Here's a quick tutorial from DigitalOcean:
[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
set-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-
minecraft-server-on-linux)

My server is actually at my home, so my godsons and their mother use a VPN to
log into it. It's easier to have it hosted on a cloud service like DO. (If
you're just accessing it at home, you don't have to bother with the VPN part.)

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kawera
Thank you very much - 5 minutes and it's already running!

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swayvil
Now that's coding with entities!

(if u haven't seen the new Terry Gilliam : Zero Theorem : then u should)

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DanBC
If the learn to mod people ever find their way here: that fucking huge fixed
banner makes reading your page unpleasant.

[http://imgur.com/NwpRBC3](http://imgur.com/NwpRBC3)

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jobu
That style seems to have become fairly common, and it really does suck on
small screens. What's worse is when you try to zoom in to make the text
readable and suddenly the top banner takes over the entire screen.

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Ntrails
Or when it moves at the wrong moment as you go to scroll/pinch and then counts
it as a click and opens the new page. At the very least let me close the
damned thing, I've seen and read it enough to interact. Now let me read the
site.

