My 8 year old loves Minecraft. Now what?

Now take her outside to play - I know its an unusual concept these days but it will be good quality time for both of you

I used to love minecraft, but i have gone off of it now.
Minecraft does NOT teach you coding, however it does let kids (and adults) use their imagination and to improvise. For example, you haven't got any sand, so you can't make this-but what can you use instead. It lets them use their brain more, rather than things just being given to you like most video games. Try introducing her to Khan Academy. It is completly free and you can learn the basics and the advanced stuff on computer programming using python and java script. This is what I did and it is actually really good! They also have loooaadddsss of other subjects on there too. Check it out!
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My daughter play as well and I can't for the life of me figure it out either. If you find out please let me know!

Mindcraft by itself doesn't teach coding. You _can_ code within the game but you don't have to.

Nonetheless, Minecraft by itself isn't bad. It's essentially a large LEGO set on the computer. She can build castles or whatnot to her heart's delight. If she wants to get into more complex projects, THEN she'll need to learn about coding within Minecraft. There are separate books or online resources for teaching that.

Minecraft, in the base sense, encourages creativity by crafting & building houses as well as various projects while avoiding hostile mobs (assuming the game is NOT in creative mode OR on Peaceful difficulty).

In terms of transferable skills / education, you'll have to start get into Redstone eEgineering as it's a rudimentary form of Electro-Mechanical & Computer Engineering. On the base level, it redstone can allow your child to do something with a push of a button, a pull of a switch or a press of a pressure place (like open / close a hidden door / staircase). On the advanced level, you can teach some basic computer components (like logic gates, flip-flops, ect.) in a somewhat practical environment. Since you're doing it in a game environment, it's easier to fix mistakes with minimal costs & being a hands-on deal, it can make it easier to learn for some.

There's noted books that you can pick up to provide some ideas to work on, but some YouTube channels like Mumbo Jumbo can provide some cool & practical ideas to implement into their game worlds. His tiny charcoal generator is something that I've implemented to help automate the process of making charcoal (so I'm not dependent on coal for my furnaces).

One easy redstone construction project you may want to suggest to your kid is to build a cobblestone generator as it can be done as 3-stage project.

1) Craft the generator core -- This can be functional as a manual generator with just a switch, button or a pressure plate.

2) Automate the generator -- This is still fairly simple, but introduces some engineering concepts like pulse clocks & a functional on-off mechanism (typically using a switch) to add onto the generator core.

3) Go 2D! -- This is moderately complex, but still relatively simple to add to the previous generator & still pretty light on processing resources. This adds procedural timing to the process (as you have to complete one step before the next step triggers).

There's some other stuff you can find, but I hope this helps sparks some creativity.

Your daughter totally juked you, it doesn't teach you coding, unless she is actually building mods.

It doesn't teach you coding. At best it teaches you how to modify game files. You can use coding to modify files but the game doesn't teach you how.
And your daughter is 8; is there a reason she needs to learn coding right now? Can't the game just be for fun?

It doesn't teach your daughter coding, but it teaches your daughter how to be creative. It improves your daughters creativity by making things that she wants to make. It makes her open minded. She will break the limitations in real life and finds the best way to do the right things in bad situations. Creativity is the pro of playing minecraft.

Can't teach her coding BUT it will help her creativity and even memory! She has to learn and remember crafting recipes, learn tactics, it will improve hand eye coordination, ect! I play it so I speak from experience! She can also make friends online if she goes onto servers! DON't WORRY! There are rules for servers and moderators, administrators, helpers, and owners! She could even own her own server which would teach her permission/coding depending, or she could be staff on a server so there's a lot she can do!

Just answering for points