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I wonder how many people got into coding because of Runescape like the author... I have almost the same origin story [1] and I know a lot of people who also do.
by vzhou842 7y ago
I wonder how many people got into coding because of Runescape like the author... I have almost the same origin story [1] and I know a lot of people who also do.
[1] https://victorzhou.com/blog/how-i-became-a-programmer/ https://victorzhou.com/blog/how-i-became-a-programmer/
- Nuzzerino 7y agoDouglas Rushkoff's Cyberia (1994) has some coverage on the idea of a true hacker and the "curious" personality archetype that matches it. It was more than 10 years ago that I read it and it resonated strongly with me, so perhaps it's worth a read if you like to understand more of the psychological roots. https://www.amazon.com/Cyberia-Trenches-Cyberspace-Douglas-Rushkoff/dp/1903083249 https://www.amazon.com/Cyberia-Trenches-Cyberspace-Douglas-R...
- dillonmckay 7y agoGreat author. Both fiction and non-fiction. I highly recommend ‘Exit Strategy’.
- minderasure 7y agoI share that sentiment. My first exposure to programming was some C++ when I was 13th but I gave up 2 months in. It was my fanaticism over playing Runescape that reintroduced me to programming through making bots with SCAR.
- yangikan 7y agoI was planning to introduce my kids to game development this summer. Is Gamemaker still the best platform to introduce kids to game dev? My kids know a bit of scratch...
- lucidone 7y agoI was heavily involved in the private server scene in the late 2000s :-)
- seibelj 7y agoI got into programming because of Runescape as well! Although my beginning was bots written in AutoHotKey that would: 1) Search screen for pixels within the color of bones 2) Pick up bones 3) Bury bones My prayer level went through the roof! Then they implemented "sleep", a system where each action added a bit of "exhaustion" that could only be solved by walking to a bed, sleeping, and typing in a captcha in order to wake up. Killed my bots! But not my love of programming :-)
- sthielen 7y agoYou can count me as another data point. I started taking coding seriously at around 11/12 years old, working on one of the big Runescape fansites, and very quickly lost interest in playing the game because I found coding to be more fun. I wonder where this is happening today, for the next generation of developers. Roblox seems like a big one, are there others?
- Eldt 7y agoSimilar story here, though I was more into the IRC servers used by runescapers to communicate, and creating IRC bots and the like
- Kagerjay 7y agoI started mine in writing autohotkey scripts for MMO's / DoTA and making custom maps with starcraft
- sidusknight 7y agoSimilar for me, but custom maps in wc3 instead.