The Minecraft Generation
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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 flight to catch". Turns out he's joined a group that operates an "airplane" that has scheduled flights in and out of an airport that someone has created. He interviewed to become the first officer on the flight.
It's messier than Minecraft, but the players seem to understand the potential. They're hiring, actually. (no I don't work for them). The stats on this page are interesting too:
The moment ic2 stopped development I lost interest.
Buildcraft spawned factorio however, so my logistic nerd needs are satisfyed :)
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.
I don't think I've ever gotten more value from a software purchase than buying Minecraft for €9.95 in 2010.
Personally I'd rather see subscriptions fund a server that's always up. I've researched running my own Minecraft server for the local kids, but it's really not worth it.
Calculating the power costs put it at about $30/month in electricity, ignoring all the time wasted getting it running.
I've been running one for over a year on my gaming PC and home internet connection.
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's part to capture the computer knowledge of a large portion of a generation.
I don't think this is as big of an issue as you think. I would be part of that generation. Almost everyone I know (and I mean regular people, I don't have many tech nerd friends) has switched to OS X in work and personal life. A few are on Chromebooks too. Most use a mixture of MS Office (when required for work/college) and Google Docs. So although I agree that there was an MS monoculture when growing up through the 90's/00's I disagree that has led to lifelong loyal custom.
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 been copied from earlier Macs). There still may be less overall diversity in the computers we use, even if there are now a number if different logos on the box.
Edit: I do see that HP made graphing calculators with native RPN in the late '80s, so perhaps they were pushing these for academic markets, although today they seem to be the provence of surveyors.
Random aside: I first learned RPN from my father, a budget analyst, and have used it ever since. RealCalc is an Android calculator app with an excellent RPN mode, if you're curious.
Before Python, I ordinarily used bc (a Unix command that acted as a basic calculator) for simple calculator calculations at my desk. bc was much more popular that the other Unix calculator dc which used RPN. Now I just use python's REPL. I only use a calculator if I'm away from a real computer (which is rare since I carry a smart phone).
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.
I think games used to be the big differentiator for many people, more so than office software, but now the gap is decreasing rapidly on all fronts. Apple needs to revisit the Mac mini as a low-cost entry into their ecosystem and make it an attractive PC in its own right as well. I know they're going to be adamant about GPU upgradability, but they should at least promote the Thunderbolt-based external GPUs and help them be a viable solution.
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 because all the "appliance computer" manufacturers almost went out of business going into the 1990s, doesn't mean that philosophy failed, and the recent resurgence of Macs has proven as much.
I suspect in an alternate universe/timeline with slightly different twists of fate, the IBM PC has died instead and closed proprietary hardware is the dominant paradigm.
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.
MS produced tools, lots of people use them. MS didn't write the textbooks and explain to students that Windows was the be-all-end-all of operating systems, the rest are heathens.
A video game like this, to be successful, requires a well-structured volunteer base (hard), or profit. And it's hardly a monoculture, anyone who wants to put in the time and money is able to produce a competing game.
My school district has been an Apple monoculture from the time they got their first Apple ][Es in the early 80s to the present day. Other than occasionally playing with a Win 3.1 machine in Sears or something I never touched a Microsoft product until I got my first computer at home when I was 17.
Wait...are you referring to Roblox or Minecraft?
Given that an uncontrolled market will always favor consolidation, there is at least one obvious step to prevent the dystopia you mention.
The hatred towards for-profit companies is childish. Why would you expect anyone to build games for you for free?
Oh, wait...
Yeah, Orwell could write a book out of it.
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).
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.
They have it all. Those computers have firmware, an OS (LuaOS), filessystems, network routers, you name it. You can do pretty interesting things with the peripherals. You can also program robots.
Open computers does have robots, but they are much more difficult to actually build, and have more constraints. I did try to get into OpenComputers, but everything felt so much more limited and expensive, and I just wanted to program cool things.
Source: my 8 year old daughter who tattled on strangers and said "didn't their parents teach them to keep stuff private?"
That kid. <3
>> “My art teacher always says, ‘No games are creative, except for the people who create them.’ But she said, ‘The only exception that I have for that is Minecraft.’ ”
I guess his art teacher didn't play many computer games. If she was familiar only with board and party games then perhaps this comment would make sense, but "builders" have been a part of computer gaming for a long time, as any obsessed fan of Railroad Tycoon or Civilization can attest to. In Fallout 4, a relatively new title, you can build entire towns.
I was skeptical at first; now we have it on every device in our house and we have a family server that we share with my sister and dad.
TerraFirmaCraft is a total overhaul mod that is 'more realistic' (not fully, but more so) and teaches a general outline of how to progress from the stone age to the ages of metals (different packs also exist that add other mods to extend that up through, say, the (steam) Industrial Age).
If automation and distributed systems are a topic you want to cover the automation you setup in something like FTB's recently released Infinity Skyblock pack/map (there are numerous letsplays and streamers doing that now) is pretty fun, if extremely time consuming. I would not play this without a dedicated server (it is VERY nice to leave chunks loaded overnight...).
I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-line tool often used by professionals to manage servers."
But yes, once you start taking user credentials, you need to move to something like FTPS or SFTP (urgh... double standards).
It seems pretty genius to me.
When I interviewed for my first real job they included a programming "test". It was basic C stuffs (really, more C pointer focused). Things like 4 swap functions, each incorrectly implemented, what are the resulting values of a and b after running swap(a,b) or swap(&a,&b), etc.
Apparently, I found out after getting hired on, I was the only one to have ever gotten every question correct (note: I was not their only hire, the code there made sense once I heard this, I'm not there anymore). So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that sys admin jobs see similar problems. But it still really bothers me for some reason. This is fairly basic knowledge (telnet/ssh for admins, C and pointers for embedded systems programmers).
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 easy to miss.
How often is the focus on what to do once logged in, as compared to how to log in in the first place?
I'd almost thought that modding had disappeared due to the complexity involved in AAA games but nice to see it alive and well in Minecraft.
IMO, the real shift is you don't need to mod an existing game to make significantly different games. Further, AAA games are simply huge now so it's hard for a small group to change everything.
Some examples (Not Japanese):
ComputerCraft: adds programmable computers in Lua. With in game applications; programmable robots called turtles.
Botania and Thaumcraft are two magical mods with stunning visuals.
Buildcraft and AE2 are logistics-oriented mods.
All in all, vanilla Minecraft is definitely unplayable once you try it with mods.
Edit: Probably worth mentioning that Mojang hired the guy who created the modding API. (See SquareWheel's comment below for correction/details)
Edit: Just finished reading the article (I check the comments first). They mentioned the Redstone logic. Probably worth mentioning as well that a 16-year-old built a scientific calculator using Redstone. https://youtu.be/wgJfVRhotlQ
I mean... I'm biased, because I'm one of the (non-core) devs, but it's a reasonably accurate DC electrical simulator, in Minecraft! What's not to love?
Forge's early contributors have mostly moved on from the modding scene, but the current maintainers are cpw and LexManos. They've worked with Mojang on a few issues, such as the block model format, but haven't been hired by them.
Additionally, I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but the mods you mentioned aren't by Japanese developers. There is a significant modding scene in Japan, but there's little overlap with the more common mods such as you listed above. Some notable mods from that community are StarMiner[1], RealTrainMod[2], and Helicopter Mod[3].
[1] http://forum.minecraftuser.jp/viewtopic.php?t=17975
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0yAsWJZxkLFrogH1Rfa8EA/vid...
[3] http://forum.minecraftuser.jp/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14837
The mods I mentioned aren't indeed by Japanese developers but I can now see how my wording is wrong. I meant to say that the Japanese modding community is also active and doing wonders. Thank you.
... and yet somehow it WORKS, and probably provides kids with a better introduction to having to hack with computer technology than anything most kids have had to deal with since having to edit HIMEM in your autoexec.bat to get a soundblaster to work with Doom was a thing.
Administrating a medieval-themed role-playing server back then taught me a lot about server administration and general diplomacy (handling bans and choosing admins), chatting on the MinecraftForums and its IRC showed me how to function well in online communities, and now children are experiencing this all over again.
I'm a lot older than the majority of fans, but it's a great touching stone when chatting with younger cousins. My haircutter's son was playing Roblox on a computer a few feet away from me last time I got my hair cut there, and she went on and on about how much time he spent on that game. It really brought me back to those days.
It's going to be fun watching these little nerdlings growing up with such a great toy. Minecraft's popularity goes to show that we don't need to worry about a lack of modding-friendly games (Doom/Quake/Garry's Mod), the kids will find them :)
I was a big dwarf fortress fan before minecraft came out. That's probably where my obsessions really are :p.
https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/blob/master/doc...
I had originally set up a Raspberry Pi to hopefully teach him some beginning programming(my daughter has a Chromebook with regular Linux installed, and I've taught her some Python and HTML) with Scratch, but he had not interest in it at all, but he did find Minecraft on the Pi and for the first few days both kids where gathered around it until I put in on their Kindles to give them a newer version and one where they can play together.
Kids can't interact with adults online? What has this world come to?
Hilarious, and true. Oh, I hope someday to be asked how one plays Minecraft...