What sparked your inner hacker?

#1

Post by nextmovetwo » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 3:13 AM UTC

I was wondering what first interested you all in programming.

For me? My cousin showed me how to use AOL Press back in the day and I started making random fan/rom/emulator websites. It was on from there and I haven't closed notepad since. =P

How about you?

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#2

Post by palish » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 5:11 AM UTC

I wanted to make video games.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#3

Post by cperciva » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 6:38 AM UTC

I wanted to draw the Mandelbrot set -- as fast as possible. This led to an interest in code optimization, which led to an interest in numerical algorithms, which led to an interest in parallel computing, which led to an interest in computer security, which led to an interest in string matching and data compression algorithms.

I haven't done much in the way of code optimization lately -- I pretty much gave up once the P6 core came along and started aggressively pessimizing my code by executing instructions out-of-order -- but I'm still quite interested in all of the rest.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#4

Post by Zak » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 6:39 AM UTC

Shortly after my parents bought a new Macintosh, I found a program on it called Hypercard. It was a RAD tool that included a scripting language with flexible, English-like (verbose!) syntax. I starting digging around in the source code of the demo apps, and it kind of snowballed from there.

I took quite a while off after being taught that "real programming" meant C or C++ ,and later Java. The thought of trying to write interesting applications in those languages was unappealing. I discovered PHP when I needed server-side processing on a web page, but didn't find it very satisfying.

A few years ago, I heard that some guy had created a spam filter that actually worked. I read some other articles on his site, and he kept talking about a programming language called Lisp. I had heard of it, but thought it was dead. I decided to give it a try, and I haven't turned back since.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#5

Post by henning » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 7:02 AM UTC

I wanted to break security. I never wound up learning much about it because I got too interested in other things.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#6

Post by christefano » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 7:16 AM UTC

A big influence on me was the hacker culture on AOL. This was around the time AOL 2.6 or 2.7 was current, and there were many ways to modify the AOL software to do very cool things.

After AOL released version 3 of the AOL client (which closed a lot of the hooks for illegal addons), I wrote what might be the world's first searchbox for web browsers. This was when I was a teenager and AltaVista was still the largest search engine. The program I wrote was a small AppleScript application that registered an "av" protocol with Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer so you could type "av:knitting patterns" in the Location bar and have that string sent to the AppleScript applet. The script received the string, looked for what came after the "av:" and computed a full URL to send it back to the web browser. The whole process was invisible to the user, as long as the AppleScript applet was running in the background.

It was a very simple script and I released it as shareware. I later built a search plugin architecture so users could add their favorite search engines, and the whole experience was a huge lesson in programming, testing, documentation, distribution, customer support and marketing, and I was suddenly buried in work.

Then Apple developed a plugin architecture for Sherlock and I started getting fewer and fewer shareware registrations. That's what essentially killed my shareware product, but the entire experience was very exciting. I was hooked and have been hacking ever since.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#7

Post by dfranke » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 7:21 AM UTC

When I was two years old my dad bought an 8086 and installed ChessBase on it. I loved pushing the arrows keys and watching the pieces move. Then the summer after kindergarten my mom bought me a QBASIC book. I had only recently learned to read so it had to be read aloud to me at first, but I understood it. I pretty much didn't get up from my terminal all summer. By the time I started first grade I was comfortable with nested loops. I still have a friend whom I met in fourth grade who started programming as early as I did, but in REXX. I don't put much stock in Piaget :-)

It wasn't until around 1999, though, that I was really able to start becoming a hacker. That was when I finally got my own computer rather than sharing one with the family, and immediately put Linux on it.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#8

Post by davidw » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 8:02 AM UTC

Commodore PET and Commodore 64. I don't remember exactly why I wanted to program them... just that it was fun.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#9

Post by matth » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 8:20 AM UTC

I was six years old and sitting in my father's lap reading while my mother video-taped. At some point I playfully smacked my dad, he playfully smacked back and I began to cry. Afterwards, my mom said something about editing the video. In my mind, I understood her to mean she could somehow alter the video... you know, change my crying into smiles, laughs and lollipops. I still can't get over how much influence that single misconception has had on my life.

Cut to three years later.

A good family friend gave me an old Apple IIe in 1994 (I was 9). I would break it, and then watch him fix it. It was fascinating, and I finally had my chance to figure out how to make machines do what I wanted.

Re: What sparked your inner hacker?

#10

Post by nailer » Sat, Oct 06, 2007, 8:55 AM UTC

It's Bill Gates' fault.

I had an Atari ST. It had a simple, elegant GUI desktop and there was no reason for me to ever stop playing Uninvited or drawing in DeluxePaint. I would have been about 9. I'd save up my pocket money and buy $20 imported ST Format magazines with headlines like 'ATARI VS AMIGA: WHO WILL INHERIT THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING', and read about MIDI and DTP.

Everything worked so I had nothing to fix.

Alas the ST broke. And it turned out neither Atari nor Amiga inherited the future of computing - nobody made games for Atari ST anymore. I got a 286 12 running DOS 3 from my mum, and was plunged into boot disk hell trying to free that precious 640K of RAM for my games. I started editing batch files and using 'errorlevel' to make little menus so I could use less floppies (they were expensive). Then I had a 386 where the video card slipped out all the time. So I opened the case and slipped it back in. I eventually got a feel for hardware.

The computer teachers at high school were terrible. I didn't like logo, as I couldn't see anything practical. We learnt Pascal later, but the teacher was always away, so we learnt from the internet and another kid who showed us.

I read a lot of computer magazines. I wanted to write for computer magazines.

I finished high school and did a certificate in business management the same year. I did an MCSE at 17, got into tweaking a lot, then found Linux, the tweakers dream. Tweaking lead to scripting, scripting leads to hacking.

I'm actually really glad I got into Linux then, and I'm glad I stuck with it. At that time, everybody was talking about Win32 and Visual Studio. It seemed like you had to have an MSDN subscription to make software that was considered desirable by the masses. Now the internet is considered the biggest part of computing, and more often or not it's based on OSS toolsets and languages.

PS. Atari rocks all over Amiga. :^P