Similar journey here but without the burglary or prison. BBSes (300 baud modem on a C64 hooked up to an old 13 inch TV) -> warez -> learned 6510/6502 assembly

Similar journey here but without the burglary or prison. BBSes (300 baud modem on a C64 hooked up to an old 13 inch TV) -> warez -> learned 6510/6502 assembly and started cracking -> hacking/wardialing as a means to get access to computers where I could do C programming with 'real' C compilers -> found my way onto the Internet/ARPAnet in the mid-80s -> moved to Amiga (continued cracking on 68k) a reasonably 'real' computer with DICE C (Thanks Matt Dillon!), etc -> software developer. Got away from the illegal "hacking" when it started becoming a serious thing with serious consequences and I was no longer a minor, and out of the cracking/piracy thing when I was earning good money and could afford to buy things. There are a few people on HN with similar stories that I know of from back in the +hack/#hack/#Amiga! irc days (my handles there varied but were often some variant of my name: gfm, geo, etc).