[PhillyG]

Minecraft has a couple of different ways that crafting is done:

1) the original way where you have a grid that you can put items/crafting materials on. If you put particular materials on the grid in the pattern for an item, it will give you the option of taking that item at the expense of the ingrediants 2) when they ported to consoles, they made it with a recipe book, where you choose what you want to make and creation just happens if you can - no need to remember patterns, no need to move items into the pattern. The recipe book shows things that you have some of the ingredients of, and has colour coded backgrounds for all the ingredients or just some.

Either way you craft things that the game already knows about. Building things in the world is different - you just place blocks or items where you want them. I'm not sure how that relates to programming. I can't say I really understood the article.

[reinman]

The type system is where the "cookbook" lives

So in a way, if you go through all the work of setting that up you should be rewarded with some sort of crafting. After all, the type checker is kinda doing some of that work anyway

[reinman]

So there is quite a stir about dependent types in academia these days

Remember that coming up w the names for types is half the battle. Whether something is a "string" or an "Address" or an "InputField" is really a multi-dimensional type problem