Microsoft Debuts Minecraft-Themed Coding Tutorial

theodp writes: In a few weeks, writes Microsoft Corporate VP Mary Snapp, "millions of kids and others will participate in an Hour of Code, a global call to action to spend an hour learning the basics of coding. Today, it's my privilege to announce that Microsoft has released a new Minecraft tutorial for Hour of Code, called Hero's Journey." The release of the new Code.org-touted flagship Hour of Code tutorial -- the third since Microsoft purchased Minecraft Maker Mojang for $2.5B in 2014 -- comes as Microsoft celebrates Minecraft: Education Edition reaching a milestone of 2 million users.

Microsoft boasts that nearly 70 million of its Minecraft Hour of Code sessions have been launched to-date, which is certainly impressive from an infomercial or brand awareness standpoint. But does [adding a Scratch block to] move a Minecraft character forward 7 times on an $800 Microsoft Surface offer all that much more educational value than, say, moving a peg forward 5 times on a $10.99 Pop-O-Matic Trouble board game?

Comments

Should have been a Java Tutorial

[Marc_Hawke]

Instead of a 'Minecraft Themed' tutorial on how to use Scratch, if they really wanted a Minecraft coding tutorial it should have been in Java and they should have made a Minecraft Mod.

Previous "Hour of Code" themes like Star Wars made a bit of sense to just be some clip art glued to a generic coding tutorial...but Minecraft is already a game and famously moddable. It doesn't make sense to program it in a completely separate language and engine.

It's like if they had a Perl themed 'Hour of Code' and they just used Scratch to march images of Perl code snippets around to form a picture of a program.