Tech Application from CasualJaden

Member Name CasualJaden

Additional In Game Names: None

How old are you? 13

Location: California, United States

Do you have Discord? Yes: jadenPete

How many hours per day do you spend on Meepcraft? (average) 2-5

Have you ever been a Tech on a different server? No

References: Please give IGN's CasualSavagee,
CasualAlexa,
Epixaid,
OKNEM,
Shellcode,
DarkKnight49x,
_Jeter_

Introduction: Hello, my name is CasualJaden, although most of you call me by my real name, Jaden. Right now i am 13 years old, and I'll be turning 14 on July 29th. I've lived in California all my life and I've never been outside of North America. Most of my free time is spent playing Meepcraft, programming, browsing the internet, or tweaking my computer. I'm not much of an outdoor person although biking and roller blading are my favorite sports. Next year I'll be entering high school (9th grade), and although I don't know what to expect, I'm very excited to see what the future has in store for me. My two favorite subjects are Math and Science, and I've always been a straight A student with the exception of 0-2 B's. When I grow up I plan to be a Systems Administrator or Programmer, although I haven't quite ruled out which one is better yet. I joined MeepCraft in late 2013 while looking for a fun server to play. Like many others, I instantly fell in love with it's community. Besides the community, Towny was was what separated MeepCraft from other servers for me. I loved the idea of competing with other players in the economy while helping new ones out to get started. After I joined Vamp1re_Man's town, Porkville, my urge to help people caused me to recieve Assistant. I kept that rank for months until I got perminately banned for xray in early 2014. To this day, I still question why I made that mistake. After three months of avoiding MeepCraft and reflecting on my actions, I appealed on the forums, and the staff were gracious enough to unban me, even though I didn't follow the proper format. For all of 2014 and 2015 I was an Assistant and Co-mayor of Sawfalls, a Medievil town with about 150 residents. In late 2015, the town fell from lack of funds and I quite MeepCraft out of fustration. I casually logged on every month or so to see how the server was doing, but I rarely played. In February of 2017 it came to my attention that the server had reset and was no longer EULA-compliant. I saw this as an opportunity to re-join the server with a clean slate. Now I am a happy Co-mayor of BraveHeart, and I've only been banned for a day since I came back. Since the reset I've made numerous friends, and I've seen many of my old friends come back.

Please describe your experience as a developer. I've always enjoyed creativity and problem-solving, and I love how programming allow me to have fun, be creative, and solve problems. It also allows me to make the lives of those who don't know how to program easier and more enjoyable. When I was about ten years old I had an old 32bit Windows Vista machine with an Intel Pentium and 4GB of Ram. The machine didn't have Wi-Fi so I saw it as useless at first, but since I had a Kindle with internet, I Google'd things to do with it. I learned about Batch scripting and for a few months I made console applications and games with the language. I soon grew bored of Batch because I couldn't do much more but parse input and write to the console. I then discovered an app on Google Play called "AIDE" (Android Integrated Development Environment) which allowed me to program Android applications with only the tablet. For about a year, I worked on a calculator app which I named "Ultra Calculator". It had everything from basic addition and subtraction to manuals on how to use trigonometric functions. My family and I then moved to another house, and I got a new computer with an i3, 6GB of RAM, and Wi-Fi! Back when I was learning Android app development, I used mainly Java, but had heard about C++ because Android supported it too. To get a better grasp on the language, I downloaded Code::Blocks, a full desktop C++ IDE, and I made a few text-based applications. For my 6th grade class talent show I made a Tic-Tac-Toe artificial intelligence which I garunteed would beat or tie anyone at the game. Some of my classmates swore that they could beat the computer, but they never did. Each summer I tried to learn a new language/technology, and that summer I gave the game a GUI with WinAPI. The next summer, I learned about Linux and since then I've used Ubuntu, Debian, and now Arch. That summer I also made a Snake and Maze game with OpenGL. Last year in school I enrolled in a Computer Science class, which taught me the basics of 3D printing and also refreshed my knowledge of web development. This summer I have decided to learn Bukkit API to make Spigot plugins. About a month ago I dived into the subject and my first plugin was a home plugin similar to the one MeepCraft has. My next plugin became a mail plugin that followed the new specification at Trello, which I am still trying to get MeepCraft to implement so that its players can enjoy a better form of communication. Finally, my last plugin before my application was a TNT Run plugin named "TNT Fun."

What programming languages are you familiar with? I am mostly familiar with Batch, Bash, C++, Java, Python, SQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, although I am a fast learner and can learn other languages quickly.

What are you most proud of as your work as a developer? Currently I have two projects that I am most proud of. The first one I feel I put the most work into, and the second I am proud of because it got much recognition. The first project was my Maze game. I made this game last summer and it took me nearly an entire month. The game would generate a random maze using the Depth First Search Algorithm, which you can learn about here: Maze generation algorithm - Wikipedia. I recommend you watch the demonstration video, it is truly fascinating. The algorithm basically goes out on a random path and markes every block it reaches as visited. When it reaches a dead end, it goes back through the path and starts a new branch. Once it finds another dead end, it repeates the process. Eventually the algorithm will have filled up the entire canvas and backtraced to its original position, which stops the entire process. One the maze was generated in the game, it would render it with OpenGL. The player would start as a green dot and could navigate the maze with the arrow keys or WASD. Once completed, a point was given and a new maze was generated. The reason I am so proud about this project is because it was very complicated and required a lot of work, plus it was very fun to play once the project was completed. The second project I am most proud about was a Python script that I used during my last school year to win a competition against all of the class periods, including my own. Our Language Arts teacher told us that the first person to solve a riddle and email her the answer by a certain time would win a candy bar of their choice. Once I solved the riddle, I wrote a Python script in about 10 minutes to send the answer to my teacher through my school email account by the defined time. Although the script was fairly simple, it got a ton of recognition. The next day I got every response from "Congradulations!" to "Cheater!" to "How'd you do that?" Even though it required minimal effort, this script ultimately made me feel proud of my knowledge, practice, and creativity.

How do you plan to enrich the experience of MeepCraft with your development contributions? My ultimate goal as Tech would be to fix bugs and help new features and ideas become a reality faster so that the community can enjoy them sooner. For too long I felt like MeepCraft needed more developers then it has right now. I've always shown interest in becoming Tech, but now I've finally taken the effort to learn and practice the necessary APIs, languages, and skills so that I can apply my knowledge to this cause. I'm not sure what area of development I'd like to work on, as I haven't developed a preference yet. However, if I am given a choice, I'd like to work on the features that are most important to the players and my colleagues. I am also very trustworthy, as I've been assistant in one town and Co-mayor of two towns. I have never stolen someone else's property, and people have trusted me multiple times to keep confidential information. Lastly, I am willing to dedicate as much time necessary to ensure that MeepCraft has the security, stability, and enjoyable experience that its players deserve, and to learn new things that might be necessary down the road. One of my biggest fears in applying for Developer is that I might be tossed of as a "script kiddy." Although I don't have as much experience in plugin development as our current developers, I do have motivation and nearly four years of programming experience. If I get accepted, I'd like to learn more from the experts and expand upon my current knowledge of plugin development.

Do you have a GitHub account or personal website? If so, please provide the link(s) here. jadenPete (Jaden Peterson) · GitHub

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 12, 2017, Original Post Date: Jul 12, 2017 ---

I forgot to add a part, I edited it in.

 

Great app, nice person in-game. We need someone like you on the Tech team.

+1.

 

Jaden, I didn't know you could code. I didn't read the app because I already know you pretty well. I just looked at the code (I didn't understand any of it) and it looked pretty complex and intricate. We need more techs. You are active and I could definitely see you doing a good job. Huge +1

 

So Jaden,

Very impressive applications, first of all! I'm a bit concerned about your experience, since it's still "this summer", meaning that you have only a month or so of minecraft coding experience. However, I like how you are very motivated towards this job and I think that it can be a very good experience for you!

+1

 

im too lazy to restate the points above me. +1 best app i have seen in a while

 

I see you a lot in game, very friendly. You also seem prepared. +1

 

+1
Super dedicated

 

+1 for sure

 

Good luck! Wish I could program like you. Not to naysay, but an example bukkit program might be nice. It would not need to do anything really, as you obviously know coding, but just show you know some plugin aptitude.

 

Reasons stated above
+1

 

Thanks for the comment, SuperDyl! My Github link at the bottm of the post contains many of my projects, which you can take a look at.

 

Well written application, looks like a lot of experience.
+1

 

+1
Active
Helpful

 

Qualified.

+1

 

+1
active and an awesome person!

 

+1

qualified

 

Did not use me as a ref so -1 if you had used me as a ref +1 because you sir are certainly qualified. You are always nice, you do whats right and no matter what Liberal makes you mad you are still nice to them. You know how to work with people you may not like and you are always professional. Too bad you didn't use me as a ref.

 

I've been speaking with you about a lot of things related to programming for a while now and have come to see you as a very smart person that is able and willing to learn. You took my advice and ran with it and I think that your personality matches that of a great developer. I think that you would be a good fit here as a Tech staff member.

+1

Obviously programming is better than sys admin

 

Thanks Shell, that really means a lot
Also thanks for the future career suggestion.

 

Qualified, Love the application
+1