A Minecraft server, with my dad
Around 2009, with the help of my dad (also a software developer), I hosted a public Minecraft server other kids played on. The server itself was barely anything; the experience was where I picked up command syntax, the idea of an uptime, and most of the English I knew before school taught me the rest.
What it actually was
- A vanilla Minecraft server running on a box at home, port-forwarded to the internet.
- Commands like
/stopand/give @a, which were the first computer commands I ever ran that felt like real instructions instead of menus. - A small group of regulars; the occasional drama that comes with letting other children onto your server.
Why it matters in retrospect
Minecraft was the entry drug. Command syntax, scaling (even at a tiny scale), and the creative freedom of a system whose rules you could see and abuse, all at once. By the time I sat down in a "real" coding class two years later, I had already met most of the ideas; the class just gave them names. The server is also the reason my English is what it is. Most of it came from the chat box.