[angdis]

He is sixteen. "Meaningful" has a different definition for someone that age. I am in awe of the achievement not only because of the stupendous scope and complexity, but the sheer willpower and colossal amount of time it must have taken.

I hope the kid gets a lot of mileage out of it and goes onto great things. At the very least, he has earned his geek union card for life.

[shantanubala]

My mistake -- my wording was a little poor. Minecraft is an environment that allows people to be very creative, but it isn't efficient in that process. When I say "meaningful" I meant it more as a comment that I wish a development environment would exist that was as engaging as Minecraft (like a game!) but as efficient as a programming language like Python.

Because Minecraft is purely a game, it limits what a kid can accomplish from the start. A kid can only interact with their creations through the game itself, which is fine, but could it be better?

[jebblue]

It limits nothing just because it's a game. In World War II a guy was held in solitary confinement (a small wooden box) for 2 years. In that time to keep himself sane he designed and built 100% in his mind ... a complete working clock despite never having built anything like a clock or watch.

After the war, he built that clock and it worked.