What got you into computers to begin with?

I got bullied at school and my family would either neglect me or yell and be abusive, so I would skip school to avoid being beaten or laughed at, and I'd stay in my room to avoid seeing my other family members. My computer was all I had, so I got very familiar with it. The internet was my escape. On forums and world4ch, I eventually got interested in Linux and programming. So I started to learn some things on my own. Then I studied CS in higher education and now I'm a developer.

All because of growing up in a broken home and bad environment where I saw people as threats.

What about you?

I had to go to uni to avoid being conscripted and CS sounded like the most bullshit course that would allow me to slack off the most.

>>2

conscripted

What country?

My grandmother was a programmer for NASA during the cold war and when I was 4 I was looking at her programming and asked her to teach me. Been programming since then.

Bullied at school, fascinated by the computer, so tried to explore and learn as much as I could about it.

no friends or anything, spent 99% of my time in my room

there was a computer there, so I made it my life.

I've never been to school, because psychiatrists diagnosed me with mild retardation, due to birth-time brain trauma. But I wanted to write an AI, so when I got computer (around 20 years old), I got Microsoft C compiler and the K&R book pdf from local software pirates. It was actually hard to obtain a C compiler in Russia, because they mostly sold video games.

--Nikita

>>7
Pretty sure that GCC was a thing back then.

>>8
If you had Internet access.

http://ai.neocities.org/Skynet.html -- I have always been a computer.

Parents forced me to play educational computer games "after I did my homework." Thus I was always [positively reinforced to] learning, and wanted to learn how to make my own, better than what I played with [than shit score goals.]

What else did you do after you get home from school from eleven to sixteen? I played Xbox, pirated music, and programmed in C. Most fun years of my life.


I'm blessed these companies pay $$$ for shit I did for fun while I was a teen.

Growing up in a rural environment on a defunct farm with parents that lived off mineral rights leasing. Limited socialization, no need to work, no impetus to go to school. I only moved out to get away from my sisters who watched too much television.

Oh, and my mother is utterly mad. Time out of my room or the barn meant dealing with her.

>>3
There’s a good chance that it’s the same as you.

my father had an amiga and some vidya, and then a PC. then my grandmother bought me a Famiclone called Pegasus (which was so popular in Poland that people still call NES games 'Pegasus games'). then we've got ourselves a dial-up modem for the PC.

that stuff got me into vidya and the internet, which led to emulation, which led to rom hacking, which led to reverse engineering. and that's a nice way of getting into both programming and security.

Liked to write toy BAT files, cause they looked cool (color 0a, etc). Started to get more complex from there.