Minecraft Developer Coding Live

Markus Persson is one heck of a software developer. The whiz programmer for the popular online game, Minecraft, has taken his gig to the net. If you ever wanted to know just what software engineers do for a living, you can watch him and his staff code live.

Known online as "Notch", Persson was a former developer for online gaming portal King.com where he worked for nearly 5 years creating games Luxor and Carnival Shoot. In 2009, he began to develop a 3D block game called Minecraft while working part time for jAlbum. During that year, a developmental release was made for public consumption.The game caught on quickly and soon hundreds of thousands of people would create their own 3D block worlds.

Based on the success of this release, Notch would later quit his job to work on the game full time. To fund his development and livelihood, Persson asked Minecraft players to pay a small fee. The idea was that they would help keep the project going and get in at a lower subscription rate than when the game was fully developed.

In September 2010, Persson announced on his blog that he would create his own video game company, Mojang, and hire additional people. Minecraft since has grown to nearly 2 million registered users and over 600,000 paid subscribers. The company has generated nearly a million dollars in sales.

If you are any bit of interested in playing one of the most popular games on the Internet, you can visit Minecraft's website and participate. You can play the free classic version or the new paid version. Both offer single player and multiplayer game modes. Java is required.

Minecraft In Development: Live Stream

Watch Notch and his programming team code and test live to a crowd of screaming devoted fans.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.