[polyfractal]

I don't think this is quite true. I see minecraft as a good stepping stone into more advanced things.

When I was his age, I was using the Lego Mindstorms heavily. At first I started with the built in GUI language, which was extremely limiting. After that I moved to progressively more advanced languages and IDEs until I was using Not-Quite-C, a version of C compiled for the Mindstorms.

These things tend to work as stepping stones. Had the kid started on something like CAD, he may have gotten stuck at an impasse that was too difficult for him, lost motivation and went back to playing Call of Duty.

Perhaps his next project will be in a "real" application, instead of Minecraft, because he has the motivation and knowledge to move forward.