> The mix of programming, creativity, and camaraderie was sometimes very special. Maybe my recollections are clouded by nostalgia, but it sometimes felt like a hacker fantasy, coding, role-playing, and working together for good (fun).
I agree! I got into MUDs when I was 13-14 and they introduced me to good programming practices early on with things like CVS, checking patches in a group, and running dev environments for testing with various playtest groups.
The dev cycle was great too, with to-do lists based on long-term goals and player input, with coders/admins breaking up tasks for planning to get things done.
It's really hard to overstate how important that was in instilling good practices and a feel of "this is how things should be" in me as a kid, and it's definitely carried over to my professional life now, some 20 years later. I even wrote about it in my college entrance essays (something my mother mocked me for), but it was such a good experience that I don't regret it at all.
I actually found a split-off branch of a MUD I used to frequent/code for and after logging in and asking about people I remembered for a while, someone started a global in-MUD game -- one that /I'D/ made over a decade ago. That was an incredibly gratifying experience, knowing that some of my oldest, most amateur code was still out there and people were still getting some fun out of it. :)
Edit: If anyone out there was on some Wheel of Time MUDs, I was on The Weave/The True Source and As The Wheel Weaves.