>I may be a bit bias because while I consider myself a hacker I didn't have the net before I was 18 at home. I'm a hacker and "the net" didn't exist before I w

>I may be a bit bias because while I consider myself a hacker I didn't have the net before I was 18 at home. I'm a hacker and "the net" didn't exist before I was 18. My learning came from the books I bought, and the magazines I subscribed to. Somehow, without IRC or Google to help, I taught myself to program a computer, and wrote an entire game in assembly language (reinventing the concept of linking object files in the process) which I then sold. While I was in high school. I also designed and built an expansion board for my computer with only the IC technical manuals. By college I was doing real video game consulting work. I had one awesome friend who was also a good programmer, and we lived and breathed programming together. But beyond that, I was on my own. It can happen without unfettered Internet access at 9 years old.