My son used Claude Code for a while to help him fix mods and do some other small things, mostly gaming related, on his home computer. Since I switched to Codex a few weeks ago I convinced him to switch as well. It was easy since he uses perhaps once a day to a few times a week. He is 10 so he can type reasonably, but he prefers Wispr Flow to dictate (I set him up with my unused account since I use a local app on my Mac now).
Last night he was looking for a mod for Minecraft, which is focused on quickly switching between keybind profiles by hitting a hotkey. He found one, but it was buggy and didn’t work well. So I said….just make it yourself. He was super skeptical at first, but I said Codex with Terra could easily do it.
I sat him down with and helped him with the first prompt and showed him how to phrase it so it would actually make it and not just brainstorm endlessly. He set it to work and it took two turns to get it to launch and work properly, and another 30 minutes or so of work to polish it into something he really really likes. He is over the moon at what he did and he thinks it is amazing. He specifically directed the model to ensure it complies with server rules and doesn’t give him an unfair advantage (this impressed me).
As a 10 year old he is somewhat exasperated at the huge amount of AI generated content out there and he generally considers it a menace. But this got to him and showed him the real power. Now I’m convincing him to polish it a bit more then release it on Curse Forge, a popular modding platform, so others can benefit from it.
If he would have had to learn enough Java to make this work on his own, it would have taken him two weeks of work, and he would have given up after a few hours of learning. Part of me feels like learning how to code would have been better, because it would have taught him how to learn a new skill. Another part of me thinks that is stupid, and that I don’t even code anymore. What matters is the process, asking the right questions, and ensuring you make something that is quality.
So my son “coded” his first Minecraft mod.
