Learn to Program with Minecraft: Transform Your World with the Power of Python 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

If you are not on a Mac - disregard this review. Windows is likely much more forgiving.If you are on a Mac and feel comfortable having your kid run Minecraft and Python under an admin account (yours, most likely) - disregard this review.If you are relaxed about security on your Mac - disregard this review.If you want an opinion on the teaching value of this book, look at other reviews.Still here?OK, the main problem is that Mac files can be very sensitive to the ownership of the files. Normally, that is not really a problem, you install a program and it goes under Applications and everyone can use it. This is not really the case here, only the person doing the installation can use it without tweaking. And the tweaking is NOT easy to do.On to the actual issues...(note: I have posted fairly detailed steps corresponding to what I did to get it work as an Amazon product discussion on this book's page.)Step #3 - installing Java Development KitThe author tells you to install Java. This is both unnecessary and risky. Java on a Mac installs itself as Java + the Java web plugin. The Java web plugin consistently has security problems and savvy web users tend to disable it whenever possible. Additionally, once installed, a Mac's Java install does not allow removal of Java itself and makes it very difficult to disable the web plugin for other users (despite being an admin).Minecraft's authors have recognized the problems Java install cause and bundle their own Java embedded in their files. All the install instructions had to tell you was to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to Minecraft's own Java.Presto, no more need to install Java itself. I did that, but not before again installing the #@!^& Java as per the instructions. Thanks for having me saddled with an unpleasant security risk.Step #4 - Installing The Minecraft Python API and Spigot.You know that MinecraftTools Mac.zip file you downloaded? The one from sourceforge which takes 10-20 minutes to download because it's so slow?Wherever you extract it, its owner will be you. In Mac terms, that means your kid, if running under his own account rather than yours, is not authorized to read those files. That's even if you put them under the Shared user. Easy to see, just look at the files under Finder, press command+I and check the Sharing and Permissions.To run this stuff, you need Read, Write, Execute access. Your own user has it - your kid and everyone else doesn't.There is a solution, but it is not pleasant. First you create a new usergroup in the Mac, then, for all the files you extracted, you assign the same rights as the owner to that group. Finally you make your kid a member of the group.Step 1. Minecraft.Turns out that, strangely enough, the Minecraft program itself can have these permission issues. That's unusual, I've never seen a Mac application that installs with this problem, but there it was. You can google up ""Minecraft + El Capitan + Legacy Java" and find the issue on Mac Support forums. The fix was the same as before for me, assign the owner's right to the group.Now, this one is definitely not the author's responsibility. More Minecraft's.If you install the stuff for this book under an admin user and then let your kid run it directly under that user, none of these problems likely show up. Except for the unnecessary Java installation.If, like me, you have your kids set up with their own, unprivileged, account then it is likely you will have the same problems as me. Unix and Mac permissions are tricky, but essential to get right if you want to share data between users.I do this kinda of work for a living and it wasn't too hard to fix things, only took me 4-5 hours to understand what was going on. Part of what slowed me down is it was an old Mac, just reformatted to use El Capitan, so I was missing all my regular diagnostic utilities. Still, I just don't think the installation instructions are good enough for Mac users.Suggestion to author: include a link within the book to detailed installation instructions online. Don't try to cover all the bases in the book itself, too complicated. But do set up such a help site - it's too bad that such a useful teaching book can be so difficult to install.

As a professional software developer, I have to say that this is one of the best introductory level programming books I’ve ever seen. It tells kids just what they need to know to understand what they’re doing, and they get the immediate reward of seeing the action carried out in the game. It consistently links the lessons to results in the game, making it easy to stick with.It’s printed in full color so the code has syntax highlighting and images from the game to illustrate what it’s doing. Python was a good choice for the language to use, as it’s easy to learn and was created with the goal of being easy to understand by anyone.I got this for my son, who is 11, and loves Minecraft. He’s already done a fair amount to customize things himself and was very excited to take that further. I think this book is appropriate for any kid with the attention span and interest to try it out. The constant reward of seeing their work pay off will give them the excitement and confidence to drive them forward.They will need help from time to time, but even if you yourself don’t have experience programming, the book is very clear and should give you what you need to walk them through it.

I found out why my server was not connecting to the game. If you followed all directions from the book and you find that Minecraft Multiplayer says that it "can not connect to server" try the following. (It might solve your problem. It did for me.)Step 1: Open MinecraftStep 2: Change your Profile (this is in the bottom left corner of the screen). Click on Edit Profile.Step 3: Change Profile Name to "Spigot 1.9.2" or "Spigot - Python 1.9.2" (You decide what name you want, I always put the game version in the name. It is easier for me to keep track with which version I am having to playing with)Step 4: Under "Version Selection" click the box that says "Allow use of old "Alpha" Minecraft Versions"(a box will pop up, click "yes")Step 5: Now select the "release 1.9.2" (You need this release because the Spigot version is for 1.9.2. This applies to any server you use.)Step 6: Save ProfileStep 7: You will select this Profile you created every time you want to play on this server.If you are not sure if which version of Minecraft spigot is running on, run your Spigot server. Now on the server screen, scroll up all the way to the top and one of the top few lines should read "Starting Minecraft server version +++++." This is how you find which version of Minecraft you need to set your profile for.I hope this helps.

This was a gift for a 9 year old boy. He loves Minecraft and coding, so I reckon this was a good choice.

Many reviews on this book say that it is outdated and doesn't work with Minecraft. It is true that the setup instructions are outdated, in that they refer to old, unsupported versions of software, and that the author's own distribution of the software is old. However, all the programming exercises work fine if you just ignore the setup instructions and download the newest versions of needed software yourself from the official sources (which is what I would recommend anyway): Java, Python, py3minepi, Minecraft, Spigot server, and the RaspberryJuice plugin for Spigot server. The setup depends on having a client component (py3minepi) loaded into Python that talks to a server API component (RaspberryJuice) in Spigot server. If none of that made sense to you, this book probably isn't for you.I'm a professional software developer with a 7-year-old son who said he wanted to try coding. While the content is clear and easy to understand, I still think he's too young for this book. He quickly lost interest and kept pointing out how he could accomplish the same things using command blocks etc. inside Minecraft.At the time of writing this, Minecraft 1.12 was the latest version, and what I used. I used a Windows PC.

Easy and excellent practical book, I bought twice!!

The very first chapter is about setting up the environment. The server we created cannot be logged into. My son is really disappointed after initial excitement. I'm still trying to trouble shoot the issue.

Bought it for my 11 year old brother. He loves it! He downloaded the programs right away and has been working through it. I would definitely recommend it! I don't live in the same city as him so I haven't looked at it in person but I know he's enjoying it! He wanted to learn programming and he also loves Minecraft so this was just perfect for him.

私の場合、・他言語でのプログラミング経験はあるが、プロには程遠い・「高校時代に得意科目だった」程度の英語力という状況でしたが、課題（Mission）をこなしながら最後まで楽しく読めました。難しい単語はありません。（裏表紙に「対象年齢10歳以上」とあります）またプログラミング経験のない読者向けに書かれているので、説明はくどいくらいに丁寧です。飛ばさずに読んでいけば、課題が出来なくて困ることはないと思います。画面キャプチャの写真も豊富で（ほぼ全ての見開きにある）理解の助けになります。応用まではあまり踏み込んでいないので、例えばブロックで球形を作りたい場合には自分で工夫する必要があります。（10歳の子どもは2次関数を知らないので、これは仕方ないです）しかしなにしろマインクラフトなので、基本がわかってしまうと自分で応用してみたくなるのは自然な流れです。プログラミングの勉強は、自分のアイデアを形にしていく中で失敗を繰り返すことでしか身につかないと思いますので、アイデアが湧きやすいマイクラの世界で勉強するのは理にかなっていると言えるでしょう。全体的に著者の親切な人柄がにじみ出ていて、理解させるよう最大限努力していると感じました。英語がそれほど得意でない私のような読者の場合、プログラミングの基礎は先に学習しておいた方がよいと思います。

The kid loves it. He's managed to read most of it before we got a computer set up for him to mess around on. He's 11.