I've been trying to make some mods for Minecraft Java Edition and for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with Java it gets very tricky very fast. I've been using Intellij IDE with the Minecraft modding plugin and it has been so much easier to work with than Visual Studio Code.
Me and my Brothers first approaches were the Mystery Mod series, a group of mods that all require the mystery Base mod to work but can be customised by only installing one mod and not the others. This project has been uploaded to Github. To view it select the corresponding tab in the side navigation on the left.