Gamer Creates Massive Working Computer Using Virtual Minecraft Building Blocks

Craddock is not your average gamer. Better known by his online pseudonym “theinternetftw,” Craddock is one of a few crafty gamers in the process of creating a working virtual computer. In Craddock’s case, a 16-bit computer that will run entirely in Minecraft. That computer will be “Hack” compatible, meaning that it will run code meant for the Hack machine described in The Elements of Computing Systems.

Some gamers, including Craddock, an undergraduate student studying computer science at the University of Georgia, are turning their attention to video games to learn the science of computing in a way that the classroom just can’t provide. He’s currently in the process of engineering a single bit of memory that�s small enough to snap onto a 16-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU).