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The Minecraft Generation

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Re: The Minecraft Generation

#101

Post by azazqadir »

zanny wrote: post #23
joezydeco wrote: post #18

These days I'm a bit more intrigued by Roblox. My 11 year-old son and his friends have completely abandoned Minecraft for it. Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor. Then you can script things in Lua. Lua! The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the rush. He said he "had a fligh…

The idea of a corporate for-profit proprietary video game being the centerpiece of a generation's learning is horrifying and dystopian to me. It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the public schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office and are now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft…

>>The idea of a corporate for-profit proprietary video game being the centerpiece of a generation's learning is horrifying and dystopian to me.

Yeah, Orwell could write a book out of it.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#102

Post by voltagex_ »

wielebny wrote: post #42

If you'll boy or girl is interested in Minecraft, and you want to teach them programming, then I strongly suggest ScriptCraft - a Minecraft server mod that allows scripting in JavaScript. https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/blob/master/doc...

Interesting. Any idea how the interop works? I couldn't see a Javascript engine in there (Rhino?). I wrote some integration based on web services for Forge but I've never been able to muster the motivation to finish it.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#103

Post by iNate2000 »

todd8 wrote: post #86
sjm-lbm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an alternative point of view, I've always heard that HP calculators were killed by TI giving free calculators to schools - which lead to an entire generation that had no desire to learn RPN, even if it has some serious advantages in a lot of areas. The counterexamples you provide (OSX and Chromebooks) follow basically the same UI paradigms as the Windows machines they replaced (even if some of those might have bee…

There is this mystic and frankly mythology that HP's RPN is a superior entry method for arithmetic. It's not. I knew RPN from my interest in math before calculators were invented, so I liked HP's RPN. However the direct correspondence between written math and the way it is expressed on a TI calculator is a huge advantage. I still have an HP RPN calculator. I liked its physical shape and size. I like the shape of its…

RPN is a better way to think about calculating or computing.

It's more cumbersome for a single arithmetic operation, but when you're chaining operations together the stack is very powerful.

It's a lot less abstracted from the way the computer works.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#104

Post by hobarrera »

zanny wrote: post #23
joezydeco wrote: post #18

These days I'm a bit more intrigued by Roblox. My 11 year-old son and his friends have completely abandoned Minecraft for it. Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor. Then you can script things in Lua. Lua! The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the rush. He said he "had a fligh…

The idea of a corporate for-profit proprietary video game being the centerpiece of a generation's learning is horrifying and dystopian to me. It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the public schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office and are now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft…

The big difference here is that indoctrinated MS kids ended up being stuck with that as a work tool later in life.

Minecraft, actually teaches logic, and other skills that can be applied anywhere - and these kids will naturally move onto other tools for work in life - I don't see anybody stuck using minecraft at work (which did happen with MSO).

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#105

Post by pink_dinner »

zanny wrote: post #23
joezydeco wrote: post #18

These days I'm a bit more intrigued by Roblox. My 11 year-old son and his friends have completely abandoned Minecraft for it. Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor. Then you can script things in Lua. Lua! The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the rush. He said he "had a fligh…

The idea of a corporate for-profit proprietary video game being the centerpiece of a generation's learning is horrifying and dystopian to me. It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the public schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office and are now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft…

I've used many different tools, but always come back to the Microsoft office suite. Why? it's better.

Mac concentrates on a few niche features that work really well (like IOS/iphone) and Linux on the desktop (not on the server) is always 10 step behind.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#106

Post by bobwaycott »

nullc wrote: post #93
joezydeco wrote: post #18

These days I'm a bit more intrigued by Roblox. My 11 year-old son and his friends have completely abandoned Minecraft for it. Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor. Then you can script things in Lua. Lua! The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the rush. He said he "had a fligh…

Minetest is a minecraft quasi-clone that uses lua... and it's free software.

Sat down with my son and Minetest a few weeks ago. The look on his face when he first succeeded in writing up a Lua mod that gave him super powers that worked in the game? Priceless.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#107

Post by scholia »

Razengan wrote: post #84
scholia wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, because it's obviously better to use closed, proprietary hardware from a single source than one that's not just open to global competition but lets you build PCs yourself....

Like I said, I was born in an era where there were many "closed" proprietary platforms, like the Commodore 64. It's not necessarily bad, it's just a different philosophy; some prefer computers to be appliances, like their TV or refrigerator, that "just work." Others prefer computers to be DIY-servicable machines, like cars, that require active and regular maintenance but can be improved if one is so inclined. Just be…

> It's not necessarily bad

It is necessarily bad if you make yourself (or, more important) your business totally dependent on somebody who is a monopoly supplier.

> doesn't mean that philosophy failed, and the recent resurgence of Macs has proven as much.

I think all the proprietary systems failed, and there were dozens if not hundreds of them. Apple was the only significant survivor, mainly for pseudo-religious reasons.

The only areas where proprietary systems survived are in mainframes (perpetuation of IBM monopoly) and in games consoles (where hardware can be sold at a loss).

If the IBM PC had died, the world of CP/M would have continued....

> the recent resurgence of Macs has proven as much

Not really. The recent resurgence is mainly due to the fact that its lack of serious and/or business software is not the barrier it was when (a) most people can do most things online and (b) it has Unix underneath.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#108

Post by dsp1234 »

jameshart wrote: post #52
dsp1234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge? Because once you've logged in to the box, administration via telnet and SSH is exactly the same. It's not that they don't have admin skills, they just don't have updated security skills. It's not awesome, but if the interviewer doesn't think to ask about SSH skills, and the interviewee doesn't realize their skill is out of date, it's…

It's sad that it's so expensive to retrain someone used to telnet for ssh.

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not. But I would specifically say it's not that hard to show someone a different way of logging in, which is why I find the other reactions of shock so weird. I work with one system where I log in via two bastion hosts to a network where there is no direct network access to any host except via load balancers for applications and the bastion host itself. From the bastion host, I SSH to the individual systems on virtual machine network, but I could just as easily use telnet with basically no loss of security since the traffic never leaves the host, and doesn't even hit the network card.

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#109

Post by jshelly »

Filligree wrote: post #24
jshelly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, my kids (10) gave up on Minecraft a while ago and have been completely focused on Roblox for the past year.

Did you look at the modded Minecraft experience at all, before doing that?

I haven't but will now

Re: The Minecraft Generation

#110

Post by Filligree »

jshelly wrote: post #109
Filligree wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you look at the modded Minecraft experience at all, before doing that?

I haven't but will now

I recommend you start with a modpack.

That said, not just any pack will do. My absolute favorite is TPPI2; I think it's by far the most professional one, but it does require a pretty hefty machine. If it doesn't work, then there are a number of smaller/more specialized packs that likely would.

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