Comment by drzaiusx11

To be quite honest I learned exactly this way myself, however nowhere near recently by any stretch of imagination; I learned through Usenet, bulletin board systems, IRC, and a heavy dose of (bordering on obsession) reading any and all technical manuals I could get my hands on from the local used book store.

I still vividly remember reading a z80 instruction set manual on a rainy day during summer vacation by a lake as a kid (maybe 14?)--writing my own assembly by hand in the margins for fun. TBH I probably still have that exact manual in storage somewhere. Had a green stripe down the front edge/binding iirc.

Back then I easily met folks like myself out there on the net, including many kids younger and smarter than me. It was awesome.

I do hope that some form of that 'net lives on in spirit somehow, given that the Internet I knew has largely fallen to corporate interests.

Now that I have my own kids, it's been painful to watch them have such an utterly different experience than I did.

Their Internet is based entirely on consumption and dark patterns designed to capture their attention, while providing nothing (to them) in return besides a dopamine addiction and body dismorphia.