Minetest was the vehicle through which I first introduced my youngest son to programming around 7-8 years ago (iirc). The way his eyes lit up when he wrote some code to change the game and then played it was just magic. He still—as a freshman CS student wrapping up his first year—fondly remembers those magical feelings today.
Came here to ask about just this! May I ask how old he was at the time? I’m considering trying this with our 6 year-old, who is a huge Minecraft fan. Looks to me as though it would probably be beyond him but, on the other hand, I would at least like to try to re-create that “aha!” moment with VS Code on one half of the screen and this on the other.
He was around 11-12 at the time. He and his brother were huge Minecraft fans (they still play all these years later), and he wanted to learn how to change the game like mods did. I worried Java would be a bit much and might get in the way of him just trying some simple things out, and Lua seemed much simpler and approachable for me to help him with. He was also a big superhero fan, so his first 3 modifications were to give himself superpowers. We added the ability to fly like Superman, run fast like the Flash, and jump huge distances like the Hulk. His favorite moment was when he activated the speedforce() and hulk_jump() together and realized he didn’t even need to fly because the speed-running and massive jump moved him further across the map at a faster rate of speed than his superman() function did. :)
It's so cool to compare this to how I was at 11-12. I never really was affected by mascots or superheroes, never really looked up to anyone. Because of my neurodivergent childhood, I sometimes forget that normal kids are kids. But hearing about someone as old as 11-12 wanting to give themself superpowers to be like their favorite superheroes is just amazing. They are lucky to have someone like you <3
Wonderful, love it :) Thanks so much - this’ll be our project this weekend. I’ll set everything up so he can just change a couple variables and see the effect immediately. We’ll see where we get to!
