There’s always Creative mode if you don’t like the resource constraint dynamic. The mining in Survival mode is a challenge to think your way out of. You have to be smart to know the most productive ways to get the resources you need. You have to evaluate trade offs between your ideal structure and materials against what’s available in the environment. Sometimes you have to strike out to explore for greener pastures.

It’s way better than automated skinner boxes that pretend to be games...

>holding down the mouse button to mine

And football is just kicking a ball in a pitch, and racing games is just going in circles in a track. Obviously there's more to it than that simplistic reduction. In particular, you have to think where you mine, how you organise your explorations. Then, you can run into myriad things as you explore: caves, water, lava, dungeons, monster spawners, many types of ore and rock...

And if you don't fancy that and just want the equivalent of a bottomless box of legos, just fire up creative mode.

> you have to think where you mine

Never straight down. Or straight up. Ye gods, the lava.

You might have missed the point.