You both have a point. When I showed a text-mode adventure to a kid, their reaction was "Really? Why would anyone play such a thing these days?"
On the other hand, getting started with toy twoliners involving a question and a simple arithmetic answer can spark some interest. The effect is augmented if what you type can have an immediate effect on hardware like in the case of Duinomite where the inerpreter is running on the MCU itself and doesn't need uploading like on the Arduinos or Mindstorms.
There's a number of mods for Minecraft that put Lua into the mix. One I was using (ComputerCraft?) had all the common UNIX commands implemented as things like ls.lua, so typing "ls" actually just ran a Lua script with the corresponding name.
You really couldn't get a more hackable computer.
These instances can have 4-16MB of memory allocated to them which honestly is way more than is necessary. They can make remote HTTP calls. With the right server settings they can even adjust the in-game weather to match the real world.
The possibilities are literally endless. A few lines of code can produce immediate results, and you can iterate and expand on that to make elaborate systems.
On the other hand, getting started with toy twoliners involving a question and a simple arithmetic answer can spark some interest. The effect is augmented if what you type can have an immediate effect on hardware like in the case of Duinomite where the inerpreter is running on the MCU itself and doesn't need uploading like on the Arduinos or Mindstorms.