Keywords: Minecraft, R, containers
Minecraft is an open-world creativity game, and a hit with kids. To get kids interested in learning to program with R, we created the "miner" package. This package is a collection of simple functions that allow you to connect with a Minecraft instance, manipulate the world within by creating blocks and controlling the player, and to detect events within the world and react accordingly. The miner package is intended mainly for kids, to inspire them to learn R while playing Minecraft. But the development of the package also provides some useful insights into how to build an R package to interface with a persistent API, and how to use Docker containers with R to manage interactions between different software systems. In this talk I'll describe how to set up your own Minecraft server in a container, and provide a few examples of the R package with a live Minecraft session.