This a book about computer programming—it uses Minecraft as a way to teach you
about computer programming. If you are looking for some helpful tips on how to build
structures and fight combat, there are some other great books on the market listed in
Appendix A that will help.
By programming Minecraft, you make your gaming experiences even more exciting, creative,
and individual. As you play the normal game, you follow the basic rules of the
Minecraft game as set out by the game designers. By writing programs that interact with
the Minecraft game world, you can make complex and repetitive tasks—like building
huge streets of houses and large structures—automatic. You can make the game and the
objects inside it behave in new ways, and invent new things that even the original creators
of the game didn’t think of. But most of all, you will learn a general skill—how to
program using the Python programming language. You will then be able to apply this to
all sorts of other things, not just Minecraft. Figure shows a huge street of houses that
was built automatically by a short Python program.
 |
| A huge street of houses, built by a 20-line Python program |
In a recent video about why all children should learn programming (www.youtube.
com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc), Will.i.am is quoted as saying “great coders are today’s
rock stars”. The new skills you learn while following the adventures in this book will
make your Minecraft experiences more personal, more creative, more ambitious. Your
new wizardry with programming will amaze your friends and fellow gamers and inspire
them to ask you what magic you used to achieve such amazing feats. The answer, of
course, is the magic of computer programming.
