The Minecraft to SWE Pipeline is underrated
- Learn Java to create Minecraft mods in 2010
- Host your own servers in 2011 (“LogMeIn Hamachi”)
- Learn how to make money from
donations in 2012
- Become a YouTuber (“Unregistered HyperCam 2”) in 2013
- 10 yrs later, full-time SWE
You could spend your teenage years playing video games, accidentally discover programming because you wanted to make a Minecraft mod, fall into a rabbit hole of tutorials made by a guy recording from his bedroom in 2012, learn enough to build things, get obsessed with optimization, spend thousands of hours staring at a black terminal window, survive engineering college, teach yourself AI from random PDFs, and end up talking to people from all over the world through a glowing rectangle in your pocket.
All because you were too lazy to do something manually once.