Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GameStart Uses Minecraft to Teach Kids Programming (Video 1)

Posted by Roblimo on from the stick-with-a-gui-until-they-know-how-to-type dept.

You can't teach all programming by using Minecraft to keep kids interested, but you can use Minecraft, Java, and Eclipse to give them a good start. That's what Tyler Kilgore and his colleagues at GameStart are doing. Watch today's video (number 1), tomorrow's video (number 2) and read both days' transcripts for the full scoop. EDIT: "Tomorrow's video" should read, "Monday's video."

30 comments

  1. Suck it, "editors." by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2

    >> intrested, but yoi

    Please tell me someone at Dice knows how to use spellcheck.

    1. Re:Suck it, "editors." by drpimp · · Score: 2

      >> Wach

      --
      -- Brought to you by Carl's JR
    2. Re:Suck it, "editors." by grub · · Score: 0

      Every day the editors at /. wake up to a hot cup of fresh brewed failure.

      They take the failure train to work.
      They snack on failure chips and failure dip.
      At lunch they eat failure sandwiches on whole-grain failure bread with special failure sauce.
      They shit out failure and wipe their asses with failure paper.
      They take the failure train back home where they eat microwaved leftover failure.
      They lay in bed at night in quiet failure with a tear running down their cheek
      They get up and, after fumbling for an hour, realize they are too inept to make a noose then put the rope of failure back down for another night.
      They cry themselves to sleep and have the same shared nightmare of running in slow motion as the utter blackness of a failed life catches up.

      Then they wake up to that hot cup of fresh brewed failure.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    3. Re:Suck it, "editors." by Roblimo · · Score: 1

      Working sick, didn't insert the finished draft on time. All corrected now.

      Thanks for noticing,

      - R

    4. Re:Suck it, "editors." by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      Spellcheck?

      Tag! You're it...

      And watch out, misspellings can be intentional. Got your attention, didn't it? That's all they need. Do make sure to click on the ad...

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. You've got to be kidding me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about no.

    1. Re:You've got to be kidding me by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      How about no.

      Agreed. That shirt is hideous.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    2. Re:You've got to be kidding me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could be worst. It could be one of these feminazi camp that only allow female or female of colour, or whatever is in fashion now.

      I, for one, applaud their egalitarian stand and hope that any more 'teach kids programming' corporate grant or public subside go to them rather then Anita's auschwitz summer camp.

  3. Stop teaching shitty code by pecosdave · · Score: 2

    If you want to teach good programming Mine Craft is the LAST place to go!

    Old Quake engines are open source.

    --
    The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
    1. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by Georules · · Score: 1

      You must seriously be tripping balls. They aren't showing elementary school kids the source code for the games. They are using the games to teach programming concepts.

    2. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by dpidcoe · · Score: 1

      Without watching the video, I would assume that they're referring to things such as building redstone circuits ingame, rather than breaking down the games source code.

      I got my first introduction to programming-like topics through playing garrysmod running the wire addon. I remember starting out with simple circuits with a few logic gates to open and close doors or aim turrets, then moving on to expression gate as that feature was developed. By the time I started programming classes in college I was pretty familiar with everything from control algorithms (I'd sort of come up with the idea of a PID loop on my own when trying to stabilize a spaceship) to binary addition circuits (one of the first things I ever made in the game).

    3. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by Jake+Griffin · · Score: 1

      Nope. It's actually creating MineCraft mods, etc. http://www.gamestartschool.org...

      --
      SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
    4. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by Jake+Griffin · · Score: 1

      Here's a link to the syllabus (I also linked to it above). It is not playing the game, but modding the game. http://www.gamestartschool.org...

      --
      SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
    5. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by Georules · · Score: 1

      Making a mod for minecraft is not the same as working with the game source code. They're making very small programs like "if it's block type 50 hit it with your axe". Looking at the source code for quake would not be nearly as accessible to learn basic programming concepts.

    6. Re: Stop teaching shitty code by pecosdave · · Score: 1

      I never miss a chance to rip on Minecraft.

        My first experiences with the game had to do with children who wanted to run the game but couldn't because the code was so buggy it needed more horsepower than the systems in front of them could provide. They could play UT2004 on the system smooth as glass and it looked great, but Minecraft looked like hammered shit even when it was running smoothly. The kids insisted on that game and that game only, even though it caused them massive amounts of frustration even when it wasn't crashing. I've encouraged other sandbox and build your type games, but no, they want the crap fest.

      I let my nephew play with my well hacked and stocked PSP with hundreds of games from multiple systems. He asked me at least a dozen times if I could make ANY version of Minecraft work on it, during a very important event.

      Between the fits caused by its poor performance and buggy code and the weird obsession it's followers have for it I just can't resist bashing on it.

      I bought my daughter the developer Humble Bundle that included a lot of RPG tools, I'm going to have to go learn that and Unreal Ed myself just so I can teach it to the kiddies in my life to kill the Minecraft obsession.

      --
      The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
    7. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      There's a Visual Studio plugin to create Minecraft mods now.

      Microsoft is out with a 'beta' version of Minecraft for Windows 10. I suspect it isn't written in java.

      Minecraft hasn't hit 2.0 yet, but I predict there will be many surprises for part of the fanbase. Particularly for mod developers.

    8. Re: Stop teaching shitty code by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      They could play a game from 2004 but not Minecraft. Go figure.

      Please do make a better game. Nobody wants to stand in your way.

      The installer for Minecraft for the PC now is an .msi file and it bundles in an embedded JVM. When I noticed, I uninstalled the stand-alone JVM on my machine immediately. I'm pretty sure that has fixed a lot of issues for many people. But I doubt if the long term plans now that Microsoft owns Mojang involve java forever. There's a Visual Studio plugin for Minecraft mods now, and I'm pretty sure the port for XBox isn't java. It's at rev 1.8 and 2.0 probably isn't far off.

    9. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Nah he's not tripping balls. He's just part of the standard slashdot peanut gallery who collectively pop into everyb thread and smugly announce how the person in the story is such a massive idiot for doing it wrong and how OBVIOUSLY there's a better way to do it. Naturally the peanut gallery inhabitants never actually leave the gallery and do anything useful.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    10. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      They are talking about writing java mods to the game which change the way it behaves.

      For example- "timber" is a mod that causes all of a tree to fall when lower blocks are chopped.

      "Toughboats" is a mod that makes boats not take damage.

      Some mods get pretty sophisticated and past a certain point, you are going to be rooting thru the deobfuscated actual minecraft source code.

      Cool stuff.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    11. Re:Stop teaching shitty code by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      You can do a lot of logic in Minecraft. Beginner programmers would have no chance with the Quake source code.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re: Stop teaching shitty code by DocHoncho · · Score: 1

      here's a Visual Studio plugin for Minecraft mods now, and I'm pretty sure the port for XBox isn't java. It's at rev 1.8 and 2.0 probably isn't far off.

      It's not. But apparently the Windows 10 version is based of the current Minecraft PE version, which is written in C++. The Xbox version would be a bad base since it can't do infinite worlds and probably has huge swaths of it written specifically for controllers, etc.

      They haven't been too specific about any of it, but I would imagine that this Windows 10 edition is going to be the only edition before too long. Maybe they'll have a Mac version. Linux is probably fucked.

      The fanboys don't want to admit it, but as far as I'm concerned the writing is on the wall for the existing Java version.

      --
      Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
    13. Re: Stop teaching shitty code by pecosdave · · Score: 1

      My point is the game from 2004 still looks great today. Minecraft from any era looks like shit.

      --
      The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
  4. Subjecting kids to Eclipse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    is child abuse.

    1. Re: Subjecting kids to Eclipse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is. My kids are interested in programming but both gave-up after waiting on Eclipse. It is just too slow to use.

    2. Re: Subjecting kids to Eclipse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No way the kids will wait for the twenty or more minutes it takes Eclipse to load and become usable.

    3. Re: Subjecting kids to Eclipse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, in a one hour class, Eclipse's bad performance is a significant problem. I know in the Java high school class I taught, they kids spent more time waiting on Eclipse than programming. The autocomplete also confused them pretty badly. They would think they were doing something wrong when all they had to do was wait a while.

    4. Re: Subjecting kids to Eclipse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you thing Eclipse is bad, wait until you've suffered through Breaking Dawn.

  5. Why do that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why teach "programming" to kid? To delude another generation into thinking it can be an actual career when it's soulless and draining boring job bashing out code and ruining your health by sitting in front of a monitor all day? Meanwhile the smart people go into management and make big bucks while you keyboard monkeys slave away waiting for your jobs to be outsourced or given to some H1B Paki. Computers are for chumps.

  6. ComputerCraft by RogerWilco · · Score: 1

    I grew up with the old LOGO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29) in the eighties to teach elementary school kids some programming. (I was about 10-11 at the time).

    Nowadays you can do the same with the ComputerCraft mod for Minecraft. I've now been using it for 3 years to teach 13-14 year old girls programming and it works really well. I teach about 80 in a few events throughout the year as an outreach program for my work. They start writing working programs within 30 minutes and within a couple of hours can do things like write their own name in Minecraft blocks.

    It worked much better than I could have hoped, I can really recommend it to anyone who needs to teach kids or teenagers some basic programming. They will have fun doing it.

    --
    RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor