It's gonna be fresh. It's gonna be educative. It's gonna be an adventure. It's gonna be useful. Well, almost. Almost the opposite.

Source

What

I will try to write a Minecraft mod. I have seen Minecraft once or twice, on Youtube, right before I blocked five-to-eight-year-olds from watching a gameplay by a bunch of kiddies elaborating on their erection.

Why

An eight-year-old wants me to do it. He's my nephew. I like him. But he just won't let go. He's gonna whine about it every time he opens his mouth in my presence. Well, he does let go actually. I said 'yes' once and told him he needs to pair with me to see how painful it is. He left the room before I even managed to hit download on an IntelliJ page.

What

...do I think of Minecraft?
It's meh. OK, maybe it's OK. And has a potential to be awesome. Kids' enthusiasm ensures this potential does not unravel in me. They are just like me. Full of enthusiasm and hope, and initiative, and ideas. And no interest in how it's actually done. They will change their ideas with every change of the wind outside the window.

But you will learn a new thing

No, I won't.

programming

I do it for living. It's not like I will now become a superprogrammer. I'm a boring type of a person that will do what needs to be done, improve what needs to be improved, will not jump through a universe of super cool technologies disturbing the industry. I do everything I can to add value, remove obstacles, support my team and finish the product before delivering.
When you build a house, you have an idea, a dream. Let's say you want an intelligent house, made out of super futuristic materials. Twenty bedrooms, jacuzzi, sauna, table tennis room, hobby workshop. And you make it. I will remember that it needs a shitter in it. Sounds boring, but it would be a pity to have to take a dump on your table tennis table. I will think about the boring stuff.

java

I do it for living. And I won't stop. I will learn Go, Scala, Kotlin, Python, Bash, Srash. I will use whatever. This will require Java.

new tools and technologies

Full of promises and disappointment. They will be slightly documented, poorly written, hard to make to work.

Source

work with enthusiastic young people, willing to learn

They will forget about it before I say F in "What the flip is that schmoe?!" and give up. They will not be interested. They will not be impressed. They will use one weekend next summer to learn everything I know and make me redundant in my work.

I will be left alone with it, listening about how I keep sitting at the computer all the time and not caring about anything else. This is the favourite comment every time I'm not told I'm not spending enough time trying to progress my career. On the best days I hear both, at the same time.

Source

Run Forest, run!

Nope. I know how it's going to end. And I will still do it. He's my nephew. He's enthusiastic. Minecraft is better than trading crack or sniffing permanent markers. He'll get bored with it in a couple days/weeks/months/years. But maybe, just maybe, it will not be that bad, he will get a basic idea about what I do. And even if it doesn't get him anywhere, it will maintain a curiosity. Curiosity in children is the only thing that makes me want to tackle the horror I will experience. To make him more of a living person, let's call my nephew Fergus.

What to expect of this

What do you want to expect? I'm an attention prostitute, I will adjust. Leave a comment and let me know.

I expect this to fail. I expect no mod will be created. I expect the whole interest is a scam to make their Grandmother pay for a PC version of Minecraft and I'm a tool to be discarded once the bytes with the block universe land on the hard drive.

I will write geeky stuff. I will provide too many technical details. I will do my best not to use offensive language. I will try to make it interesting. I will try to share a perspective that many young ones don't have when they are 13-18 and come to older ones online saying "I have no idea what to do with my life, but I have always been sitting in front of a computer so I must be a prodigy and want to earn a lot of money doing nothing difficult. What should I do to get a senior role in three hours?". Or something like that.

What I need to do

I was trying to plan it a little bit. There are some areas I managed to make notes on.

Rules

• writing a mod will use the computer/tablet/tv time. It's not free extra hours of a resource
• behave or forget it. If I am told there were problems in treating others or fulfilling the responsibilities, I will move the game to a separate account and encrypt the home directory
• teach me. I know almost nothing about Minecraft and its rules. Explain your plans and expectations. Make sure I understand you and you understand what I understood

Preparation

I'm having holiday starting Saturday and somewhere around that time Fergus will arrive here. I have a bit of time to get prepared.

• computer needs upgrading DONE - I've replaced a regular magnetic hard drive with an SSD and changed from 4 to 8 GB RAM. RAM improved the experience, but the SSD is a game changer. Mom should be happy with her computer's performance
• install the tools DONE - at least IntelliJ and JDK 8.
• get Minecraft - still need to buy it
• get Forge - Minecraft does not support mods on its own, it needs an additional tool to be able to add them. I went for Forge because, well, just because. I saw a tutorial with it and I don't know what else to choose
• learn to make mods - I started watching some tutorials on Youtube
  

plan what to make - it's not my part, I've seen some drawings and have absolutely no idea if they make any sense or not, if they are complete or not.

Source

set up a repo - now here's the thing: that rascal plans to earn money with this mod. I don't know if it's doable, I don't know if it should be done. I'm more like "let's give it away, it's useless anyway, let others have fun". We'll see where it takes us.

Upvote, follow, comment. Share your experience if you have any. Let's see where it takes us.