BBSes were central to my growth as a software developer. I was a teenager in the '90s and quickly became hooked on calling up BBSes. I played the games on them

BBSes were central to my growth as a software developer. I was a teenager in the '90s and quickly became hooked on calling up BBSes. I played the games on them and found out you could make money writing and selling them... so I made my own. I released them as shareware, as others before me had, and asked people to mail me checks to register them (i.e. remove ad screens). I soon got mail from people all over North America and the world asking for registration codes. I wrote those games in C and C++ and were the first big projects I ever worked on. Looking back, the code was really poorly done, but it taught me a lot about managing work and basic programming fundamentals. I got better as a developer over time, but I cut my teeth on writing BBS games.