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1. Updated (and Safe) Setup Instructions Online
   There are a lot of reviews that say that the instructions are outdated. In the first chapter the author acknowledges that this will most likely be the case. He provides, right there in black and white on page 3, a URL to the book’s web page where I found links to updated instructions for recent versions of Minecraft and Forge. I feel the instructions are safe enough to set it up on vanilla Windows 10; I didn’t have to set up a VirtualBox sandbox for my son. I was very relieved that we didn’t have to install Curseforge and thus Overwolf, which seems very sketchy — it is intrusive to the system, exists mostly as an ad platform, and will only install if I run it as administrator!

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2. Great for kids who want to learn to code
   I got this for my 8 year old daughter and while we have only just begun working through it, the book is simple to understand and is a great way to begin learning to code.

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3. Cool book – for PC Minecraft not app
   This is a cool book, but you need the computer version of Minecraft! My kids play on the iPad and I got it for them not knowing. We are holding onto it for when we get the computer version.

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4. Son likes it
   This was recommended by my son’s Minecraft weekend camp instructor – and he’s been learning a lot from the book.

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5. Book seems to be out of date.
   We tried for 4 hours to ge the basic programs downloaded with no success. One of the issues is that the information is not current. We then went to the publisher’s page and there was a link to a video that is supposed to be more up to date. It helped a little, but even the new info seems to be old, now. There is also a link on the publishers page that is supposed to go to current info, but that link is broken.If the author or publisher is reading this review, please help by giving us direction on what to do.

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6. Very well written & accessible. But already showing age.
   As an adult programmer who loves to tool around, I loved this book. ComputerCraft is a geeky “mod” for Minecraft, Java Edition, that simulates 8-bit computers and awesome “turtle” robots. The book helped me to learn the lovely Lua language, which is used to program these virtual computers & turtles, and it helped me appreciate older computer systems, a.k.a., “retrocomputing.” Lua is also commonly used in modern game programming and embedded systems, so the knowledge I gained here will be useful beyond Minecraft. The author of this book is a great educator, and his code is solid.That said, the mod has been evolving, and some things covered in this book are deprecated, such as how modules/APIs are used. I really hope the publisher creates second edition of this book. It would be appreciated by those of us who are playing around with the newer editions of the mod. For an example of a newer edition, check out the popular fork (spin-off) of ComputerCraft called “CC-Tweaked.” It is available for free on github.com.

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7. Great for kids and adults
   This book is a very good way to introduce you or your kids to python. And make it fun. Getting to see your results in Minecraft is very rewarding. The book does a great job of walking you through the initial steps.

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8. Fantastic Beginner’s Resource!
   In return for an honest review, Al was gracious enough to send me a PDF copy of this book. I promise to be upfront with what I liked while not sugarcoating things that I didn’t.To start off, what I liked. This book is fantastic for people who have never touched Lua in their lives such as myself. Whenever a new script or topic is introduced, instead of simply giving you a script to copy word for word, Al breaks down most of the different elements within the code. Whether it be 20 lines of code or 250, it’s broken down into bite-sized pieces to easily understand what everything does. I also like how the topics vary but still tie into one another. You may learn how to make the turtles detect blocks around them and act appropriately early on, and later on that same concept will be used in a much more complicated code. This truly is a great gift or tool for anyone wanting to get into programming.Now, as for what I consider downsides. The first and most obvious should be that while some of the Lua concepts can be transferred over into real-life applications, the majority of what is used in this book focuses on the Minecraft Java Edition mod called ComputerCraft. So anything like turtle.detect() or turtle.forward() will only apply to this mod and nowhere else. This isn’t anything bad with the book itself, but it is something you should consider when purchasing this. If you don’t have access to Minecraft Java Edition or mods, it may not be as useful to you as it was for me. And even though much of the code is explained, not everything is. This led me to do research on my own for what certain things are, such as cliArgs.All in all, this was a great book, and I’m sure I’ll keep returning to it to refresh myself whenever I forget something. If you have Minecraft Java Edition and have access to ComputerCraft, and want to begin learning Lua, then this is definitely a book worth buying.

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