Hello Sponge Community!
My name is Cody Sommer but I am also known as Codisimus (Creator of ButtonWarp, CreeperControl, PhatLoots, and several more Bukkit plugins). A couple of years ago, I wrote a book to teach the Minecraft community how to learn Java and develop their own Bukkit plugins. You can find my book at http://goo.gl/z2r6R8.
Now that the Sponge API is released, I can begin work on porting my plugins. I am wondering if this community would be interested in my book if I were to create a second edition for the Sponge API. Working through the text requires no previous programming knowledge. I can answer any other questions about it that you may have.
Please let me know if this would be a useful tool. I would rather not waste my time typing up a revision if the community would not use it. I look forward to your response and being a part of this project.
-Cody
Would be great for someone like me who doesn’t feel like looking through java code and learning peice by peice on my own. I would love to have a book like such, provided It could also include a forge mod version, seeing as the sponge API is being built upon forge.
Maybe a little off-topic question:
Since using Sponge API seems to be more complicated/advanced, and maybe server too. How may you suggest the learning phase of Sponge for people compared to Bukkit?
This will help me determine what would be needed:
- A complete rewrite
- An update to use this new API
- New text entirely to explain how development for Sponge is different than Bukkit.
I would only focus on server modifications. I know that forge does client side but I am not the right person to teach about client side modding. But as for Server side mods, I don’t expect it to be too difficult to learn Sponge after programming for Bukkit. As long as you know how to read the Javadocs when you need to. I have yet to see if Sponge supports some of the more complicated features that Bukkit did. If not, the final chapter may have to be rewritten.
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I don’t have your book, nor have I seen it, but judging by the cover, it looks really pro. I was thinking you were going to link us to a text document… sorry! 
To answer your question, yes I’d be interested. I’m rewriting my mod / plugin for Forge / Sponge so it’d be great to see a book dedicated to that.
So when you say Sponge, and because its based on Forge, would the information entail Forge stuff too? Or strictly Sponge? Or are you unsure at this point?
At this point I would proly only cover as much of Forge stuff that would be required to work with Sponge. I have yet to start porting my plugins but once I do, I will have a better idea of would this new edition should cover to sufficiently teach new developers to creates plugins on their own.
Seems a little premature right now—the API is pretty unstable so far and a LOT of stuff is still being worked on. However in the long term I’m sure it’d be an amazing resource—large Bukkit plugins are where I really cut my teeth on Java development, and I’ve personally considered using them as a teaching tool before so I’m sure many would benefit from it.
I wouldn’t release it until I could be sure that it would not change drastically.
The book covered all of the Bukkit features used within a large plugin but kept out the more complicated Java aspects. Maybe I misunderstood your statement but I want to make it clear that this book teaches enough Java to create plugins. But once you are able to program them on your own, you can start working on improving your Java skills. I believe that I learned more Java from pushing my limits with Bukkit plugins than from the courses I took in college. Not saying that college wasn’t great, it just isn’t as good as real world experience.
Agreed.
I am pleased to know Bukkit because it helps me a lot in learning.
@Codisimus I have your book right here 
and i was already hoping there came a port to Sponge of it 
The book itself is a really great book to begin with, only problem i found is that it doesn’t connect with a online tutorial (youtube most) because of the Netbeans IDE instead of Eclipse IDE but it is still a really great book 
.
I hope you will be doing the same for Sponge!
My apologies for bumping a dead post, but I’d love to see your new book if it was ever made! I want to learn to port bukkit/spigot to sponge and or forge. I have a source code to a plugin I really love, and want to port it.