My approach uses a remote interface called RCON to send Minecraft operator commands to the world. It can do everything you could do with Command Blocks or Operator commands and more because of the Python constructs like loops and branching.
The other benefit is that you get to use the latest developer tools such as VSCode and the latest version of Python as you are working outside of the Minecraft game to write your code.
It does provide a similar capability to MCIWB. It recreates the Education edition python interface which does let you set and get blocks and see when a player hits something.
Its a solution for people who learn education edition and then want to run the same code at home on a BUkkit server. (Bukkit is a Java server mod )