The beginning: when it all started with a Discord bot
I was 13, and I had no idea what I was doing. I'd found a YouTube tutorial for building a Discord bot, copy-pasted code I didn't understand, and it worked. That feeling — seeing something I'd "made" respond to messages in a server — had me completely hooked.
That's how it all started. Not with a plan. Not with a vision. Just curiosity, a text editor, and a lot of console errors.
Conodia: learning by building (for real)
A few years later, I launched Conodia, a fully custom Minecraft server. What was meant to be a hobby project became a 4-year adventure with a team of 15+ people, Java plugins built from scratch, a TypeScript API, and a Discord ↔ Minecraft ↔ website integration.
I learned server administration, game design, money management, and most importantly — how to manage people. Not always easy.
We opened three times. On the third, we hit over 95 concurrent players. For an amateur project, that was huge.
We eventually shut it down. The Minecraft community at the time had become too immature, too toxic. Permanently playing the role of "police officer" is exhausting. I chose to close it cleanly rather than drag it out.
High school: the hardest stretch
Between Conodia and Efrei, there was high school. A period I won't forget.
I changed schools. Teachers told me I'd never pass my baccalauréat. That I wasn't built for academia. I still remember those conversations — not because they broke me, but because they strangely motivated me.
I passed my baccalauréat with an "assez bien" (merit) distinction. It's not an extraordinary feat, but it's mine, and that matters.
Efrei: finding my place
At Efrei, I joined several student associations. First Parm'Efrei — a cheese appreciation club. Spoiler: I don't really like cheese. I left fairly quickly.
Then I joined Expr'Efrei, now renamed Nest By Efrei. It's an internal social network for the Efrei community — students, alumni, and administration. Polls, themed channels, Twitter-style posts. A real product, not just a school project.
That's where I started to understand what it truly means to build something under real constraints: users, expectations, deadlines.
What I've taken away
I'm not someone who learns first, then does. I've always learned by doing — sometimes very badly, sometimes fairly well. This journey isn't linear, and that's exactly what gives it its value.