Well, I'm glad I didn't come to the wrong conclusion. It's too bad, though, because Minecraft modding got this kid really excited, and there are many (maybe millions) like him. It seems like it could be a really fruitful area for work.

Actually, when I was looking through stuff for him, I found a project that implemented Minecraft bindings for JavaScript with the aim of creating a friendly environment for kids. The author was an HNer and had posted it here a year or two ago. But the project had languished since then, and it struck me (perhaps unfairly) that it probably wouldn't work out of the box in all configurations. The last thing one should put in front of a kid is something that immediately frustrates them by failing in strange ways. Tools like that need to be really, really well-hammered. Which is one of the advantages of Scratch.