I'm Luigi, 24 years old, and for almost 3 years I've been waking up at 3am to bake bread for a living.
But since I was a kid, I've always been the guy glued to a screen — not just playing video games, but wondering how they were made. Especially Minecraft. There was always something magical about that game that made me think: someone built this. A person, with code.
So I decided that person could be me too.
My Background (Or Lack of It)
I'm not starting from absolute zero. A while back I enrolled in Aulab, an Italian bootcamp that trains developers in 6 months. I didn't finish it. Life, work, the early mornings — it got in the way.
But the spark never died.
This week I sat down with a clear goal: build a real Minecraft plugin, from scratch, in one day. Not a tutorial I'd copy and forget. Something that actually runs on a real server.
What I Built
CustomNotify v1.0 — a Minecraft plugin that lets server owners fully customize:
The join message when a player enters the server
The quit message when a player leaves
The death message when a player dies
Everything is configurable from a config.yml file — no code changes needed. Server admins can edit messages, toggle each notification on/off, and use color codes.
Simple? Yes. But it works. And it's mine.
The Stack
IntelliJ IDEA Community — free IDE
Java with Maven for dependency management
Paper API 1.21.1 — the plugin framework for Minecraft servers
Gamehosting — where my server runs
The Moment It Clicked
When I saw this in my server console:
[CustomNotify] Loading server plugin CustomNotify v1.0
[CustomNotify] Enabling CustomNotify v1.0
[CustomNotify] CustomNotify avviato!
And then I joined the server and saw:
✦ Benvenuto Luigi nel server!
I said to myself: "It's actually doable. I can build things that help people, that solve real problems, on any market that exists."
That feeling is hard to describe. It's not just a line of green text. It's proof.
The Hardest Part
Understanding abstract concepts and getting into the logic of code.
When you bake bread, everything is physical. You touch the dough, you feel the temperature, you see the result. Code is invisible. You have to build a mental model of something you can't hold.
My advice to anyone in the same position: don't try to memorize syntax. Try to understand why each line exists.
When I stopped asking "what does this do?" and started asking "why is this here?" — everything became clearer.
What's Next
This is day one of a 12-month plan:
Month 1 → Add /reload command, publish CustomNotify on BuiltByBit
Month 2-3 → Build a staff moderation plugin, first real sales
Month 4-6 → Economy plugin, YouTube tutorials in Italian
Month 6-12 → Private commissions, collaborate with other developers
The goal: turn this into a second income. Maybe one day, a first one.
A Note on AI
I used Claude as a technical mentor throughout this process. Not to write code for me blindly — but to explain why each piece works, to guide me when I was stuck, and to help me build a realistic roadmap.
AI didn't replace the learning. It accelerated it.
If you're a beginner wondering if it's too late to start — I'm 24, I wake up at 3am to make bread, and I deployed a working Minecraft plugin today.
It's not too late.
If you have any advice for someone just starting out, I'm all ears.
Luigi Sanseverino Baker by night. Developer by day [BuiltByBit profile coming soon]
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