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I have this theory that AOL warez/hacking/prog scene is the root of many startups that exist today. It's how I first learned to code by making punters. I had

I have this theory that AOL warez/hacking/prog scene is the root of many startups that exist today. It's how I first learned to code by making punters. I had made the first punter for AOL 4.0, only to have my hard drive crash the day of release. This heavily demotivated me fyi. A few buddies of mine got started here. I've also read Zuck used to mess around in the scene. Aol was my first foray into the internet at the age of ten or so (maybe younger?). My screen name was JediForce3 (Yup, i was a true geek). I think it was Aol 2.5? Anyone else here used to mess around with AOL back in the day? Steve Case used to get a lot of crap, but I always respected him + looked up to him as the founder of AOL.

qeorge 16y ago
That's absolutely what got me into programming. As silly as "progs" were, it catalyzed me to learn the Windows API, how to find and share code online, and how to build my first website (for the purpose of sharing my AOL code). It even gave me my first experience working with a remote team. Now I run a web design and programming shop, with one of my best friends who stayed up on weekends with me "hacking" AOL in middle school. (SN was EatenByCow, was a member of "Unity" if that rings any bells.)
- flyosity 16y ago
  Me too. I had a Mac so the Mac punter/prog scene was really tiny. Most of them were written using OneClick, a scriptable palette-building app to make on-screen widgets that fired off macros. Ah, those were the days! FWIW my punters were named AOElephant and Hex.
bl4k 16y ago
I found that AOL was nowhere near enough, wasn't 'true network' (I understood this at 10), was heavily criticized by the PC media because of this (which I also used to read) so I switched it off and discovered BBS's The BBS's were the foundation of almost every person I have met in tech, every job, all dev, every startup I have been involved with and there is a very strong camaraderie amongst the early BBS hackers (most of us went on to become v early web hackers). So I see from how inside AOL you think your theory might hold, but outside of it there was an entire larger network that was far more interesting
- _delirium 16y ago
  I used both in the mid-90s, sort of on the tail end of the BBS scene, and while I did generally like the BBS scene better culturally, I think I agree with the previous comment that AOL got me more into programming. The fact that people were trying to do so many things on AOL that it wasn't really intended to support led to a whole cottage industry of teenagers writing scripts and bots and whatnot, whereas my usage at least of BBSs was much more straightforward and "normal" (I used them in the intended manner). I don't think I ever really scripted anything in my terminal emulator, though perhaps others did. I ended up really getting into programming a bit later via mIRC scripting, though.
- badwetter 16y ago
  Yeah BBSes were a lot of fun back in the day. Used to play around on alt.hackintosh on Usenet too. Fun times!
yarone 16y ago
Whoa - fun to hear and think back. My experience on AOL definitely inspired my interest in programming. I had a really similar experience. First, with BBS's on my Packard Bell Pentium 60mhz (got from Costco, had that famous floating point bug). That's when I learned the difference between a local call and a local "toll" call (same area code as you doesn't mean local...oops) Then I got on AOL (starting with 2.0 for DOS I think), Prodigy, CompuServe, and eventually MSN. On AOL I ran into those "proggies" and met a guy named Cybermun who explained to me how to write them (he wrote AoHades). He gave me a copy of VB 3.0. I found it totally accessible in that I could design my UI point-and-click and then figure out how to make it work. I'd ask Cybermun questions endlessly and he'd never answer directly, always forcing me to figure it out. My dad bought me a copy of the white book (The C Programming Language, Kerningham and Ritchie) Hung out in private room "warez2" most of the time. I was "WalrusPowr" (and a dozen variants of that name). Every time I entered a chat room I'd announce myself with some funny string and "{s walrus" (remember that!? It would play a .wav file, provided you had a file with that name). After some time I wrote a relatively popular shareware app called AoLOL! (worked on AOL 2.5 thru 4). Each week folks would mail me a check for $14.95 for registration. AoLOL! added a row of icons to the AOL toolbar and gave you a bunch of extra functionality (most notably a "keep in touch" feature, which would cycle through a list of friends and automatically check if they were online). This was before the Buddy List and before ICQ had launched. Incidentally, I was put in touch with the founding ICQ team, let them use my AOL account to play with the recently launched AOL buddy list, fixed the broken English on their web site, etc. (they were four young Israelis). They offered me a job but I was in high school, had no drivers license, etc. My UIN is 104006 (they started at 100,000). I also wrote an app called "AoLMNOP" which was a bit of a joke. It launched of "Ao" proggies and generally mocked the entire scene. I can't tell you how many hours I spent staring into a 14" CRT between 10PM at 4AM chatting and "coding" (VB3 and mostly "Sendkeys". Some Windows API calls. Ha!) while my parents thought I was asleep. My younger brother tells me he'd wake up to the sound of me laughing out loud and hammering away at my keyboard. It was a big part of my youth. Ahh, fun times.

qeorge 16y ago

That's absolutely what got me into programming. As silly as "progs" were, it catalyzed me to learn the Windows API, how to find and share code online, and how to build my first website (for the purpose of sharing my AOL code). It even gave me my first experience working with a remote team. Now I run a web design and programming shop, with one of my best friends who stayed up on weekends with me "hacking" AOL in middle school. (SN was EatenByCow, was a member of "Unity" if that rings any bells.)

flyosity 16y ago
Me too. I had a Mac so the Mac punter/prog scene was really tiny. Most of them were written using OneClick, a scriptable palette-building app to make on-screen widgets that fired off macros. Ah, those were the days! FWIW my punters were named AOElephant and Hex.

bl4k 16y ago

I found that AOL was nowhere near enough, wasn't 'true network' (I understood this at 10), was heavily criticized by the PC media because of this (which I also used to read) so I switched it off and discovered BBS's The BBS's were the foundation of almost every person I have met in tech, every job, all dev, every startup I have been involved with and there is a very strong camaraderie amongst the early BBS hackers (most of us went on to become v early web hackers). So I see from how inside AOL you think your theory might hold, but outside of it there was an entire larger network that was far more interesting

_delirium 16y ago
I used both in the mid-90s, sort of on the tail end of the BBS scene, and while I did generally like the BBS scene better culturally, I think I agree with the previous comment that AOL got me more into programming. The fact that people were trying to do so many things on AOL that it wasn't really intended to support led to a whole cottage industry of teenagers writing scripts and bots and whatnot, whereas my usage at least of BBSs was much more straightforward and "normal" (I used them in the intended manner). I don't think I ever really scripted anything in my terminal emulator, though perhaps others did. I ended up really getting into programming a bit later via mIRC scripting, though.
badwetter 16y ago
Yeah BBSes were a lot of fun back in the day. Used to play around on alt.hackintosh on Usenet too. Fun times!

yarone 16y ago

Whoa - fun to hear and think back. My experience on AOL definitely inspired my interest in programming. I had a really similar experience. First, with BBS's on my Packard Bell Pentium 60mhz (got from Costco, had that famous floating point bug). That's when I learned the difference between a local call and a local "toll" call (same area code as you doesn't mean local...oops) Then I got on AOL (starting with 2.0 for DOS I think), Prodigy, CompuServe, and eventually MSN. On AOL I ran into those "proggies" and met a guy named Cybermun who explained to me how to write them (he wrote AoHades). He gave me a copy of VB 3.0. I found it totally accessible in that I could design my UI point-and-click and then figure out how to make it work. I'd ask Cybermun questions endlessly and he'd never answer directly, always forcing me to figure it out. My dad bought me a copy of the white book (The C Programming Language, Kerningham and Ritchie) Hung out in private room "warez2" most of the time. I was "WalrusPowr" (and a dozen variants of that name). Every time I entered a chat room I'd announce myself with some funny string and "{s walrus" (remember that!? It would play a .wav file, provided you had a file with that name). After some time I wrote a relatively popular shareware app called AoLOL! (worked on AOL 2.5 thru 4). Each week folks would mail me a check for $14.95 for registration. AoLOL! added a row of icons to the AOL toolbar and gave you a bunch of extra functionality (most notably a "keep in touch" feature, which would cycle through a list of friends and automatically check if they were online). This was before the Buddy List and before ICQ had launched. Incidentally, I was put in touch with the founding ICQ team, let them use my AOL account to play with the recently launched AOL buddy list, fixed the broken English on their web site, etc. (they were four young Israelis). They offered me a job but I was in high school, had no drivers license, etc. My UIN is 104006 (they started at 100,000). I also wrote an app called "AoLMNOP" which was a bit of a joke. It launched of "Ao" proggies and generally mocked the entire scene. I can't tell you how many hours I spent staring into a 14" CRT between 10PM at 4AM chatting and "coding" (VB3 and mostly "Sendkeys". Some Windows API calls. Ha!) while my parents thought I was asleep. My younger brother tells me he'd wake up to the sound of me laughing out loud and hammering away at my keyboard. It was a big part of my youth. Ahh, fun times.