| You mostly play the vanilla game of Minecraft without programming. The survival loop is to mine resources in order to craft better tools that allow you to explore, build, and defeat enemies. You can get a lot of mileage out of it this way and never touch the programming side. It is an all time bestseller for good reason. There is an in game material called redstone that is used for simple electrical engineering and circuitry. The devices can play music, push blocks around, open doors, fire arrows, run train cars, and other applications. The programming starts with command blocks, which can use redstone triggers to execute keyword commands. There are a bunch of mods that can add automation through programming. For instance, programming a mining robot to drill out a tunnel, using Lua. Mod programming itself would often be in Java, and add new game entities or systems. This can get fairly advanced and there are some total conversion mods (eg some Pokemon clones). There are other fun games that are more like programming, like those from Zachtronics. So why Minecraft? It's fun and familiar, and provides a massive canvas for creativity that fires the imagination. |
Zachtronics programming[1] games: Spacechem Molek-Syntez Opus Magnum Infinifactory
And probably the rest of them (but for the rest of them, I cannot speak from direct experience)
[0] As in "part of the game is writing assembler code" [1] As in "you are configuring state machines"