Every once in a blue moon I'll meet someone who can trace the genesis of their career to neopets. I learned to code from neopets. It started from html, then I fell into a cheats crowd, where I learned Visual Basic (some of the best early cheats were in Visual Basic).
Then one day, a guy coded a program in Python. It was only one with a "modern" style (it used Window XP styles, while most VB6 programs looked like windows 98 programs), and it used threads so it could watch multiple stores instead of having to manage multiple processes.
I must have been 12-13, and I was completely floored with it. I was convinced everyone programming in VB6 was wrong and the future was Python. I eventually self taught myself Python just to write my own cheats, which I eventually sold to others for millions of neopoints. Then my account got frozen and I moved on to other games.
Similar story to me. I was big into games and game design as a kid and was already doing some light modding of games but only a little programming. I experimented with using a memory editor to cheat on the Flash games in 6th grade, which promptly led to my account being banned. I was devastated and wanted revenge and swore I would write my own, sophisticated autobuyer bot. By mid 7th grade, I finished my project. I wrote it in REALBasic (was on a Mac). I implemented a barebones HTTP socket and cookie jar on top of the raw TCP socket provided by the language and learned to do all of that by sniffing my own network traffic and reading parts of the RFCs. I wrote rudimentary String parsing functions to parse the HTML results since I don't know Regex, and I also defeated the shop CAPTCHAs using a novel approach I have never seen anyone else use to this day. My bot worked phenomenally.
Fast forward to college, I re-implemented my bot as a pet project to learn Python. This time it was much better and included automatic selling of loot, automatic auctioning with feedback based pricing algorithms, and multiple account coordination for using a command and control server. I'm pretty sure I was the most sophisticated botter on the platform at the time. I had a very roundabout way to convert the loot into USD and was making around 7-10$/day completely passively.
Out of college I interviewed at a malware reverse engineering company. When you pass the interviews, they ask you to give a presentation before you get your offer. I chose to do a presentation about the bot (it was interesting from a security perspective)... big mistake. The VP of engineering was suddenly "pulled in to something" and I went home without an offer.
I’m in my mid-30’s now. In high school I learned HTML because I really wanted to customize the styling of my Guild (I think that’s what it was called).
And then built a neopets fan site and forum which taught me basic business (trading links with other fan sites, hiring/managing forum moderators, and eventually sold the fan site during junior year).
The will to customize my MySpace profile was also a driver for learning HTML.
I sometimes think about this in the context of today’s highly controlled platforms that simply don’t make space for users to customize or do anything outside the platform directly.
> in the context of today’s highly controlled platforms that simply don’t make space for users to customize or do anything outside the platform directly
There is Roblox, which is popular with kids and lets them upload minigames written in Lua.
I followed this exact same path. Started with HTML for guilds, learning to slice PSDs and ended with learning VB6 to develop auto buyers / adopters :D Slopdog forums was my inspiration for using VB I think?
I hung out with the neopets kids in school who were doing html stuff. I never really got into neopets myself but some of them were really into geocities which I totally clicked with. Some of my friends were artsy so I made pages for webcomics and CYOA games (with hand drawn graphics to accompany). Those friends ended up getting careers in the arts while I ended up as a computer/electrical engineer.
I'll jump in too. Also started coding with HTML in Neopets and then joined the middle school's programming club! We were playing around with C++ and Visual Basic. Love seeing these updates!
This is exactly how I got my start. Neocodex was the forum where I learned how to program, and slicing up images in CS2 to show up on a Tripod site was how I learned web development.
this is how i got my start in programming, eventually leading to working in finance and now in gamedev for a AAA. many of the programmers i worked with as a teenager to build neopets automations are in similar places. i have so many stories and even met my ex wife of ten years through the community!
oh and i regret all the duping glitches i found and exposed and stuff im sorry
Real talk, call me "old" - but it's like "Oh we get to be put on some list?". TLDR: They ruined the fucking internet. The internet sucks now, all those great "magical" experiences - they fucked it up. For all of us. Everyone.
You know there is one way to say a big "fuck you" to all this shit? I mean at least an idea I had?
What if you had physical "RSA" keys, you were part of groups, had to join, etc. Something like this...whatever. And you know how you use the internet? You literally send use data encrypted blogs in blobs. Keys change, ciphers change. Think 56k internet, but not "slow" - just blobbed/packageized.
In theory, you can basically just wrap the whole internet like a privatized radio relay - just much much faster and, global. The internet becomes only a packet relayer. Custom cryptogrphically rotated black box to anyone except keys in theory. Try and surveil that fuck shit mother fuckers.
The internet could at least fucking exist in some form. You could even have this "public" type AI-VERFIER "resigned/hashed packet" that uses some open source community checker that can be this trust based "thing"...auditble that is basically saying there "there is no weird images, etc...or there is no whatever here" and this can be signed. ISP network layer would see something like:
[VERIFIED CHECK]
fsdf34234ASDFsdfDataBLOB
Or go "naked"
fuckyou_fsdf34234ASDFsdfDataBLOB
In theory, it would at least try and prevent the NSA/INSERT_GOV_TER_ORG_HERE from at least respectfully trying to decrypt the "risky" packets. Blah blah blah. You know, just being kind to everyone I guess. Thanks.
I don't know...just an idea.
EDIT: There are of course other solutions related to end devices and comprised devices. The "simple" solution is offline, air gapped stable enviroments that handle all your decrypted / encrypted devices.
There there are network things, etc. All details - blah blah. But I am just talking shit. Someone should build this.
Serious question though, from a purely data analytical question - are you an incredible programmer? Like legit. Please tell me you're a badass. You gotta be? Real talk, rate yourself. I demand it.
That very well might be true for some of my family members, I'll have to ask. Perhaps not in terms of a career, but certainly in terms of computer literacy.
For me, it was the game Starseige:Tribes (1998), which had a (comparatively) phenomenal client-side scripting scene. I could learn the magic incantation, and now the HUD has a new box with a timer in it, or my character "speaks" new phrases--not intended by the designers--by interrupting existing canned phrases at the right times, etc.
There's something magical when skill-learning happens really close to a personal payoff from it.
Is it the gigantic, sparse levels made out of 10 polygons per square mile?
I only played the game for a few months 27 years ago but it has stuck with me. I don't know if I've ever found a game that was that compelling and fun. But then again, I haven't really given any of the modern games a shot and mostly gave up with the FPS genre after team fortress classic fell out of favor
Tribes 2 was basically a reimplementation of the major Internet protocols at the time... IRC for their chat rooms, newsgroups for the forums postings, profile pages was kindof proto-myspace, joining a "tribe" had obvious Unix groups parallels.
Neopets was also my first introduction to any sort of programming. Customizing your shop and guild pages with basic HTML and CSS was the first programming I ever did. I remember fondly adding MIDI music snippets as well that you could copy-paste in, all to increase the curb-appeal of your shop so you could sell your omelettes.
I had a very similar experience. Writing the HTML to spruce up the homepage of my Neopets guild was my first introduction to any website creation or programming.
I know people are attracted to the code aspect ("it's how I learned html") and that's great but it's also a fabulous world (says I, an absolute noob and not good at any of it) and fairly hard to boot, in its difficulty curve
I like this idea of old internet things coming back to life (thank you Ruffle)
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Then one day, a guy coded a program in Python. It was only one with a "modern" style (it used Window XP styles, while most VB6 programs looked like windows 98 programs), and it used threads so it could watch multiple stores instead of having to manage multiple processes.
I must have been 12-13, and I was completely floored with it. I was convinced everyone programming in VB6 was wrong and the future was Python. I eventually self taught myself Python just to write my own cheats, which I eventually sold to others for millions of neopoints. Then my account got frozen and I moved on to other games.
Fast forward to college, I re-implemented my bot as a pet project to learn Python. This time it was much better and included automatic selling of loot, automatic auctioning with feedback based pricing algorithms, and multiple account coordination for using a command and control server. I'm pretty sure I was the most sophisticated botter on the platform at the time. I had a very roundabout way to convert the loot into USD and was making around 7-10$/day completely passively.
Out of college I interviewed at a malware reverse engineering company. When you pass the interviews, they ask you to give a presentation before you get your offer. I chose to do a presentation about the bot (it was interesting from a security perspective)... big mistake. The VP of engineering was suddenly "pulled in to something" and I went home without an offer.
I’m in my mid-30’s now. In high school I learned HTML because I really wanted to customize the styling of my Guild (I think that’s what it was called).
And then built a neopets fan site and forum which taught me basic business (trading links with other fan sites, hiring/managing forum moderators, and eventually sold the fan site during junior year).
The will to customize my MySpace profile was also a driver for learning HTML.
I sometimes think about this in the context of today’s highly controlled platforms that simply don’t make space for users to customize or do anything outside the platform directly.
There is Roblox, which is popular with kids and lets them upload minigames written in Lua.
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put it aside for years and eventually became a programmer later in life
oh and i regret all the duping glitches i found and exposed and stuff im sorry
My hacks were shit before I had hair on my balls, you know? But I tried. VBasic....when Microsoft didn't suck. XP 4 LYFE...ride or die
Wanna be in my guild bro?
Best, Prototype #52ASB_ADS_ALPHA_A+
Real talk, call me "old" - but it's like "Oh we get to be put on some list?". TLDR: They ruined the fucking internet. The internet sucks now, all those great "magical" experiences - they fucked it up. For all of us. Everyone.
You know there is one way to say a big "fuck you" to all this shit? I mean at least an idea I had?
What if you had physical "RSA" keys, you were part of groups, had to join, etc. Something like this...whatever. And you know how you use the internet? You literally send use data encrypted blogs in blobs. Keys change, ciphers change. Think 56k internet, but not "slow" - just blobbed/packageized.
In theory, you can basically just wrap the whole internet like a privatized radio relay - just much much faster and, global. The internet becomes only a packet relayer. Custom cryptogrphically rotated black box to anyone except keys in theory. Try and surveil that fuck shit mother fuckers.
The internet could at least fucking exist in some form. You could even have this "public" type AI-VERFIER "resigned/hashed packet" that uses some open source community checker that can be this trust based "thing"...auditble that is basically saying there "there is no weird images, etc...or there is no whatever here" and this can be signed. ISP network layer would see something like:
[VERIFIED CHECK] fsdf34234ASDFsdfDataBLOB
Or go "naked" fuckyou_fsdf34234ASDFsdfDataBLOB
In theory, it would at least try and prevent the NSA/INSERT_GOV_TER_ORG_HERE from at least respectfully trying to decrypt the "risky" packets. Blah blah blah. You know, just being kind to everyone I guess. Thanks.
I don't know...just an idea.
EDIT: There are of course other solutions related to end devices and comprised devices. The "simple" solution is offline, air gapped stable enviroments that handle all your decrypted / encrypted devices.
There there are network things, etc. All details - blah blah. But I am just talking shit. Someone should build this.
Dead Comment
For me, it was the game Starseige:Tribes (1998), which had a (comparatively) phenomenal client-side scripting scene. I could learn the magic incantation, and now the HUD has a new box with a timer in it, or my character "speaks" new phrases--not intended by the designers--by interrupting existing canned phrases at the right times, etc.
There's something magical when skill-learning happens really close to a personal payoff from it.
I still occasionally have dreams of various Tribes levels.
Same with Descent - I swear there is an alternative universe where my soul is adrift in that space, recently ejected from my ship ..
I only played the game for a few months 27 years ago but it has stuck with me. I don't know if I've ever found a game that was that compelling and fun. But then again, I haven't really given any of the modern games a shot and mostly gave up with the FPS genre after team fortress classic fell out of favor
Deleted Comment
I like this idea of old internet things coming back to life (thank you Ruffle)