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Wow this brings back some memories. I attribute AOL to all of my programming curiosity and success. When I was around 11 or 12, my dad put in me in front of A

by niix 11y ago

Wow this brings back some memories. I attribute AOL to all of my programming curiosity and success. When I was around 11 or 12, my dad put in me in front of AOL 2.5 and from there I was curious how things worked. I quickly got involved in the AOL "prog" community and learned how to write small (some times malicious) applications in Visual Basic for AOL. Those were the days haha :)

slipstream- 11y ago
and those archiving the AOL walled garden today are rediscovering said research. Back in December I coded a custom AOL .tol to send arbitrary tokens :)
peterwwillis 11y ago
Coding, indexing, and mirroring AOL progs actually changed my life. I got expelled in 8th grade due to my school's network admin claiming I was hacking the Apple school network using Win32 VB AOL tools (?!), which kick-started a series of more run-ins with future school administrators, made my mother so depressed she couldn't get out of bed, and eventually led to me quitting school altogether. I didn't think of AOL as the spark that led to all this until just now. It definitely had a way of instilling a sort of wonder about what was "behind" all those windows, what was possible, and whether you could get it to do something it wasn't supposed to. Punters were the weirdest thing about AOL, because they could have easily fixed them but seemingly never did. If it stopped working in a new version, a simple modification would make it work again.
- niix 11y ago
  Ironically Steve Case just came through where I live. I imagine if I was there to meet him I would let him know that AOL is basically responsible for me being a professional software developer. I remember building all kinds of weird "PrOgZ": punters, mass imers, emailers, scrollers, etc. So much fun :D
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    Oh man, I was in a group of 'punters' called the seven deadly sins way back, our favorite target was yahoo chat rooms though because they had this voice chat system and if the poor end user left their mic on you could hear them getting hit with a few thousand im's and freak out.

by niix 11y ago

slipstream- 11y ago

and those archiving the AOL walled garden today are rediscovering said research. Back in December I coded a custom AOL .tol to send arbitrary tokens :)

peterwwillis 11y ago

Coding, indexing, and mirroring AOL progs actually changed my life. I got expelled in 8th grade due to my school's network admin claiming I was hacking the Apple school network using Win32 VB AOL tools (?!), which kick-started a series of more run-ins with future school administrators, made my mother so depressed she couldn't get out of bed, and eventually led to me quitting school altogether. I didn't think of AOL as the spark that led to all this until just now. It definitely had a way of instilling a sort of wonder about what was "behind" all those windows, what was possible, and whether you could get it to do something it wasn't supposed to. Punters were the weirdest thing about AOL, because they could have easily fixed them but seemingly never did. If it stopped working in a new version, a simple modification would make it work again.

niix 11y ago
Ironically Steve Case just came through where I live. I imagine if I was there to meet him I would let him know that AOL is basically responsible for me being a professional software developer. I remember building all kinds of weird "PrOgZ": punters, mass imers, emailers, scrollers, etc. So much fun :D
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Oh man, I was in a group of 'punters' called the seven deadly sins way back, our favorite target was yahoo chat rooms though because they had this voice chat system and if the poor end user left their mic on you could hear them getting hit with a few thousand im's and freak out.