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My son and I made a minecraft version of snake/tron where each player would leave behind a trail of TNT blocks as they ran around a closed arena. Hitting a TNT would set off such huge chain reaction of explosions that the raspberry pi couldn't handle it. After a few rounds of these explosions the minecraft world looks like a total wasteland.
This is fantastic. Minecraft is one of the big factors that made me want to learn Java (back when the game first came out), and indirectly spurred a lot of my own personal development. The easier they can make it, the better.
anyone know what API wolfram is using here to communicate with the minecraft client?
anyone know what API wolfram is using here to communicate with the minecraft client?
It's a text-based protocol, so you can even use via telnet/nc. The python API included with pi is also just a thin wrapper around this.
I used to joke that Voxel Quest was just a fancy 3d graphing calculator. I think the entryway for a lot of students to become interested in math is to make rendering more accessible. Shadertoy is one step towards this, but SDF equations are much more difficult to grok than binary on/off voxel plotting, and they have to be mathematically sound or you get buggy looking results.
My first programming experience was using Logo on an Atari 800 as a 6 or 7 year old, and I instantly grasped the concept of a giving commands to a turtle with a pen. It was as game-like as most entertainment software of its time, but it subtly forced me to learn some math in order to create complex shapes. I think of Minecraft as a similarly clever idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
The physicality of the Logo turtle robot we had at our school back in the eighties was what made it "click" for me. Playing with something connected to the real world takes it to another level.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first programming experience was using Logo on an Atari 800 as a 6 or 7 year old, and I instantly grasped the concept of a giving commands to a turtle with a pen. It was as game-like as most entertainment software of its time, but it subtly forced me to learn some math in order to create complex shapes. I think of Minecraft as a similarly clever idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
I do not get why Logo went out of fashion. To me it is the king among learners. The physicality of the Logo turtle robot we had at our school back in the eighties was what made it "click" for me. Playing with something connected to the real world takes it to another level.
http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/history...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not get why Logo went out of fashion. To me it is the king among learners. The physicality of the Logo turtle robot we had at our school back in the eighties was what made it "click" for me. Playing with something connected to the real world takes it to another level.
Logo evolved into modern-day Scratch, which is included with the pi (raspbian). http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/history... http://www.elica.net/download/papers/LogoTreeProject.pdf
But Scratch is one step up the ladder to me. It is a commitment to an eco-system and a super nice but blank canvas.
I find Logo to be simpler and more limited. This is a "good thing"(tm) when getting kids hooked. The first hit should always be free :-)
I have gotten some of my non-technical friends to buy mbots. They like the idea but the learning curve was to steep for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Logo evolved into modern-day Scratch, which is included with the pi (raspbian). http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/history... http://www.elica.net/download/papers/LogoTreeProject.pdf
Scratch is really great - do not get me wrong! But I find it too advanced. They do support various external hardware. And I can highly recommend the Make lock mbot. Truly awesome. But Scratch is one step up the ladder to me. It is a commitment to an eco-system and a super nice but blank canvas. I find Logo to be simpler and more limited. This is a "good thing"(tm) when getting kids hooked. The first hit should always…
Their hardest struggle was dragging the blocks around with the touchpad. It would have been less frustrating to have a keyboard-based interface I think. (Now that I type this, I realize maybe I should have tried a two button mouse for them.)
It allows extensions in the form of Lua scripts. There is an extension [2] that opens up a TCP socket which can be used to modify the environment in any language across the network. There is an accompanying Python library [3] that is quite accessible (I had to use the 2to3 tool to seamlessly convert it to Python 3 because of some dependency problem).
I've been trying to get it to work in WebAssembly (some notes here [4]) and maybe connect Blockly / Scratch to it, but unfortunately the WebAssembly shared memory model is postponed due to the Spectre and Meltdown debacle [5].
[2] https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod
[3] https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_lib
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855176
[5] https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings/blob/master/2018/CG-...
Lots of fun stuff you can program in Minecraft Pi Edition. My son and I made a minecraft version of snake/tron where each player would leave behind a trail of TNT blocks as they ran around a closed arena. Hitting a TNT would set off such huge chain reaction of explosions that the raspberry pi couldn't handle it. After a few rounds of these explosions the minecraft world looks like a total wasteland.