Hello! My name is John or my friends would call me MrMallard or a capybara just because they believe my personality represents one. But anyways, I am new to modding and I will be using this blog as a way to start my modding journey. I started a week ago and I realize there are huge amounts of what you can do with modding. I am personally using Minecraft Forge as a way to start and go out from here.

I can tell you in the beginning, I am entirely clueless, there is so much going on when starting modding. Even though I've been watching videos from Kaupenjoe (which by the way, thanks for the modding videos, they are a good step in helping with modding!), there is so much that I do not understand. I can tell you when I did not know where to start. But I did learn a couple of things for the first week:

Learn more about Java. Yes, even the modding members in modding communities tell the same thing. Learn Java! There are plenty of resources you can use such as Codeacademy, W3Schools, freeCodeCamp, YouTube, etc... And I will tell you ChatGPT is not the way to go from here or a wraparound. While I use it to learn parts of code that I do not understand, using it to create code is a big nono. Not only Minecraft Forge is constantly updating, but you would not understand what to do if errors arise. And I can tell you, members from the modding community will greatly appreciate you for it learning Java as well as yourself if you can understand why the errors happen based on what I have seen.

After about a week of modding experience plus a class on the basics of Java for two semesters, I realize there are way more features that I need to learn. One of the hardest concepts for me to understand is lambda expressions in Java, everything about abstract classes, and generics. I am still trying to understand these concepts, but I think what lambda expressions are is filling out the information in a function (I am not sure about classes though, but I will try to experiment with that). An analogy would be like a function would be a form without anything on it, and the lambda expression would be filling out the questions, the answers, and the results, all in one (if I am misunderstanding lambda expressions, feel free to comment cause I am still new to these concepts). From my experience, lambda expressions are everywhere when I started modding. I've been looking at ChatGPT for learning aspects of the code, but I know generally it is not a good idea to use it to create code.

Another thing is that joining modding communities and modding websites is incredibly useful. I've been taking notes from the Forge Community Wiki just to help me understand the basic components of Forge. And for the modding communities, I personally join Discord servers for those; they are really helpful and I can also share my achievements!

File organization is key. I realized when I start Minecraft mod using IntelliJ, files are starting to add up and it becomes confusing. I still need to learn how to structure my files.

Anyways my first achievement was adding items to the game! I am proud of this milestone and I wanna expand more. My dream is to create an expansion pack post-Ender Dragon or otherworldly biome terrain generation.

(and yes it includes a lambda expression to add it in.)

If you guys have any comments feel free to leave them! But yeah, this is what I have for today, and I see what I can do one year from now :)