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Comment by atanasb | Hacker News Reader

This is really cool. I really like Minecraft computer components, but I could never help to think that if the guys who build them, started playing with something practical, the results might be more tangible.

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Think of it more like a better UI on top of EE307 or whatever your local equivalent is for low-level hardware design. I had to scratchbuild a functional CPU using nothing but NAND gates to pass mine. I got through it, somehow, producing a CPU which would run minimal assembly-esque programs but which existed on no physical hardware and wouldn't be for for any purpose if it did. If you can do it with red stone I think any rational person would say you have all the knowledge my class tried to impart.

It's the old Church-Turing thesis in a way; instead of using logic gates implemented with silicon transisters, they're using physical blocks and switches in minecraft. The principals are the same, just a different 'substrate'. DNA can be used as a computing substrate[1], and at a more macro level, the structure of cells[2]. The minecraft guys have a lot more in common with the early computer engineers who used relay switches and diodes on rotating drums.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_system

I have a friend who used to keep excitedly showing me his crazy, impressive redstone ALU/CPU designs. I kept trying to get him to buy an FPGA and build out something with real hardware, but he maintained that a big part of why it was fun was because of the environment and community that came with Minecraft. That might go some way toward providing an explanation.

So, did anyone do a Minecraft-to-VHDL transpiler yet? :) Sneak up on them and convert their in-game creations to something that can be synthesized into actual hardware.

Or the other way around, so we (boring people) can synthesise fully working Minecraft worlds from VHDL ;)

We can finally build a Minecraft-Implementation of Processing Sequences!

Ben Heck did a couple of shows where he made real-life redstone blocks out of electronic components:

http://www.element14.com/community/community/experts/benheck...

I've worked in hardware, and think this kind of play is meaningful.

You confront many of the engineering challenges you'd face (in terms of line routing, timing challenges, design concerns, modularity, etc), but they have simpler and more straightforward constraints because of the different medium.

You're also really unlikely to get results using exactly this same skill set when trying to work with real hardware. The immediate need for programming and complicated tools becomes apparent when you try to grapple with the complexity of modern ICs.

If you're just going to have them blink LEDs using logic gates, I fail to see what you think you're getting from hiding all the logic circuitry in little black boxes and making the parts harder to work with. I've encountered all the engineering concepts (minus some physics concerns) I learned in several quarters of circuit design as an undergrad.

The reality is that Minecraft actually is a very good tool for introducing hardware concepts, because it removes the dependence on understanding software to do something.

(Really, the tooling around hardware needs to be better, particularly for things like FPGAs. Raspberry Pis and Arduinos are making good inroads.)

"playing" "practical" "results" "tangible"

The relationships between those not-necessarily related words would need considerable detail for the claim to mean anything.

Play doesn't require results, a virtual world in a computer will never be tangible and is likely used by people uninterested in being tangible, practical things usually aren't involved in playing, it goes on and on.

This is a great learning experience for anybody, young or old. Maybe the builder in the screenshots is a carpenter and just trying to learn how hard drives work. Maybe he's a kid who will build the next gen drive in 20 years based on his ideas seeded here. How do you know?

Because if he's lucky, he'll be weaving magnetic core memory in 20 years.

Or not. I think that the medium plays a very big part here. It's the essence of hacking, twisting something like Minecraft engine to run processors, and hard drives, and stuff. Doing the same on VHDL? Boring.

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