Comment by giancarlostoro
11 hours ago
Game cheating and reverse engineering MMO backends taught me a lot: databases, networking, securing a backend (and frontend), limitations of simpler languages when comparing them to more native options for building backends.
Agreed, I was very late to the game and was forced to learn VBA for excel sheets and that is how I finally broke into programming.
When I was a pre-teen I stumbled upon CD-rom hacking guide to bypass disc requirements on games, I remember opening up the file and the screen being filled with HEX code. I was so overwhelmed I just closed it and never touched programming after that for 15 years. My life would have been totally different if I had embraced the unknown instead of retreating.
This was my introduction, too, but with Counter-Strike cheats.
A curse upon you and your descendants
It was Quake World for me