My Journey from Minecraft to Software Engineer
I am Biraj Rai. I did not go to college for computer science. It all started with a game called Minecraft.
The beginning
Back in 2015, I was 9 years old and I wanted to play Skywars with my friends. I figured out how to set up a server using PocketMine-MP. It is an open source server software for Minecraft Bedrock Edition written in PHP. It was the main option for running Pocket Edition servers back then.
The server was small but people actually played it. It was kinda popular at the time. I had no idea what I was doing. I copied and modified config files and hoped things worked.
The Java switch
In 2021, I moved to Java Edition. This is when I actually learned what Java was. I started a Minecraft network called DaPirates on Java servers. A friend from the US paid for the server costs. I learned by breaking things and fixing them. There was no one teaching me. I just Googled and read lots of docs.
The server ran on Hetzner in Germany. We had around 15 Nepali players regularly and 50 to 60 players total. There was lag and ping issues since the server was far from Nepal. Running that server taught me about Linux, databases, networking, and performance. I did not know I was learning to be a software engineer. I just wanted my server to not crash.
Mini Militia and modding
In 2018, a game called Mini Militia was everywhere. I loved it. I started modding the Android APK with hex editor pro and APK editor pro. I had no clue what I was doing at first.
While digging through the APK, I found a file called privacy.html. It was the loading notice screen of the game. It had actual HTML and CSS code in it. I started editing the text and styling. Before I knew it, I was changing how the in-game UI looked. That was my first time touching HTML and CSS.
From there I learned about styling and started making a website for my Minecraft server. I found a CMS called Blogger by Google where I started writing blogs with guides on how to download my modded Mini Militia APK and updates about my Minecraft server.
That whole phase taught me how software actually works under the hood. Patching binaries, reading hex, editing HTML inside an APK. It was messy but it taught me a lot.
Going deeper
After the Blogger days, I went deeper. I explored the internet deeply, read everything I could find, and built lots of tools and programs. Discord bots, automation scripts, small web apps, anything I could think of.
Eventually I started getting clients. People saw what I could build and wanted me to build for them. My first month of freelancing, I made around Rs. 50,000. That was crazy to me. I was still a kid and I was getting paid real money to write code.
Becoming a software engineer
From there I kept learning. I picked up JavaScript, TypeScript, Go. I built Bharosilo, a business review platform for Nepal. I did everything from the backend to the frontend to the deployment.
Now I work as a software engineer. I build things that people use. The kid running a PocketMine server on Aternos at 9 years old never thought it would lead here.
What is next
I am open to freelance projects and collaborations. If you need a software engineer who can build things end to end, let me know.