Open up plugins and modify/add to them, work off existing foundations to hone your skills, say "I want to add x command and y set of perms" and then just do it to, say, essentials. Then you can head a little further in, look at the API for Spigot (that's the main one, though bukkit, if you can get your hands on it, is interesting too). See if you can't update small plugins that have been discontinued on your own.

When you've got the confidence that you know how plugins work, feel free to start making them from small up to larger things.

In short, I suggest starting simply, even if it looks too simple, and working your way up to big things.

If you are just trying to heal a specified player, you don't need to do it via uuid. You can just create a target with their player name, because you wont be getting an offline player. So all you need to do is this "Player target = Bukkit.getPlayer(String name);"

MrrMidnight
It will since the two are almost the same.
Spigot is built and developed from the basics of Bukkit and can be seen as just a simple extension.
Although with the newer minecraft versions the difference keeps getting bigger, but it's still possible to run Spigot plugins on Bukkit servers, and the other way around.

Right thanks, then I've gone ahead to do my stuff with a craftbukkit server. I got a new problem now :
Obtaining a player's username is harder now, thanks to the 1.8 name change update. Apparently I must obtain their UUIDs to make my command work on players who have changed their names. How exactly do I do that?

0728John

McHorse

0728JohnTitle captures the essence of my post/question.
I've heard that bukkit (along with its API) got taken down; so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do from there.
I only have basic knowledge of programming and have not used any ext libraries yet (Swing, openGL etc) and I've only ever made boring text based games with tons of variables and if statements.
Developing plugins would seem like a cool thing to kickstart my programming adventure. So what do I do now?

Disclaimer: this post will contain obvious stuff.

First, you need to decide what do you want to do with those skills you want to acquire. If you want to develop plugins for other servers, you need to gain experience first (duh).

If you have some plugin that you want to implement, then what you do is trying to implement it. First, you need to choose a platform on which you're going to develop your plugins, there are, as SwampyAgent mentioned, spigot and sponge, which I know (there might more). You can also develop your plugins on forge server, but I think it is less common (and less productive).

So choose API, read docs and start coding

---

Another helpful tip is to look up source code of other mods plugins. It's really helpful when you're trying to implement a feature, but don't know how, but plugin Xyz has similar functionality, from which you can get inspiration how to implement your feature. Plugin may be open source (so you can look up the code on GitHub or download it), or closed source. For closed source plugins you can use Java decompiler.

I hope it helped

Excuse me for my ignorance, but what do I really want to code in? As in for API. Bukkit seems to have shut down but plenty of servers still run craftbukkit, so if I were to develop a plugin with spigot then it wouldn't be accessible to my craftbukkit server of choice right?

It will since the two are almost the same.
Spigot is built and developed from the basics of Bukkit and can be seen as just a simple extension.
Although with the newer minecraft versions the difference keeps getting bigger, but it's still possible to run Spigot plugins on Bukkit servers, and the other way around.

McHorse

0728JohnTitle captures the essence of my post/question.
I've heard that bukkit (along with its API) got taken down; so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do from there.
I only have basic knowledge of programming and have not used any ext libraries yet (Swing, openGL etc) and I've only ever made boring text based games with tons of variables and if statements.
Developing plugins would seem like a cool thing to kickstart my programming adventure. So what do I do now?

Disclaimer: this post will contain obvious stuff.

First, you need to decide what do you want to do with those skills you want to acquire. If you want to develop plugins for other servers, you need to gain experience first (duh).

If you have some plugin that you want to implement, then what you do is trying to implement it. First, you need to choose a platform on which you're going to develop your plugins, there are, as SwampyAgent mentioned, spigot and sponge, which I know (there might more). You can also develop your plugins on forge server, but I think it is less common (and less productive).

So choose API, read docs and start coding

---

Another helpful tip is to look up source code of other mods plugins. It's really helpful when you're trying to implement a feature, but don't know how, but plugin Xyz has similar functionality, from which you can get inspiration how to implement your feature. Plugin may be open source (so you can look up the code on GitHub or download it), or closed source. For closed source plugins you can use Java decompiler.

I hope it helped

Excuse me for my ignorance, but what do I really want to code in? As in for API. Bukkit seems to have shut down but plenty of servers still run craftbukkit, so if I were to develop a plugin with spigot then it wouldn't be accessible to my craftbukkit server of choice right?

0728JohnTitle captures the essence of my post/question.
I've heard that bukkit (along with its API) got taken down; so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do from there.
I only have basic knowledge of programming and have not used any ext libraries yet (Swing, openGL etc) and I've only ever made boring text based games with tons of variables and if statements.
Developing plugins would seem like a cool thing to kickstart my programming adventure. So what do I do now?

Disclaimer: this post will contain obvious stuff.

First, you need to decide what do you want to do with those skills you want to acquire. If you want to develop plugins for other servers, you need to gain experience first (duh).

If you have some plugin that you want to implement, then what you do is trying to implement it. First, you need to choose a platform on which you're going to develop your plugins, there are, as SwampyAgent mentioned, spigot and sponge, which I know (there might more). You can also develop your plugins on forge server, but I think it is less common (and less productive).

So choose API, read docs and start coding

---

Another helpful tip is to look up source code of other mods plugins. It's really helpful when you're trying to implement a feature, but don't know how, but plugin Xyz has similar functionality, from which you can get inspiration how to implement your feature. Plugin may be open source (so you can look up the code on GitHub or download it), or closed source. For closed source plugins you can use Java decompiler.

I hope it helped

Hey,

I don't know a lot about plugin development either, it's something I'm also hoping to learn. Considering the Bukkit API is out the windows, you should take a look at the Spigot API, you can get an overview of this here:

https://hub.spigotmc.org/javadocs/spigot/

Secondly, if you have extremely little knowledge in the field, I recommend you taking a full Java course first. Programming plugins will come a lot easier to you if you have knowledge of Java as a language initially. I think this would be a better idea than going in with the sole intentions of learning how to make just plugins.

Hope some of this helped.