[minimaxir]

The Game Genie/Gameshark incidentally scared child-me away from computer science because I didn't understand how the hell they came up with these codes (aside from 99 in hex is 63 and 255 in hex is FF).

One Game Shark came with a "how to hack" VHS which came down to "it's easy, just observe which values change in memory when you perform an action, and just freeze that value!". That's one way to get imposter syndrome.

The best unintentional introduction to computer science/memory abuse in a video game for me was the Missingno glitch in Pokemon Red/Blue.

[Lammy]

> The best unintentional introduction to computer science/memory abuse in a video game for me was the Missingno glitch in Pokemon Red/Blue.

Same for me, as well as forcing wild encounters to be Mew (#151), the Pokémon normally unobtainable outside of Nintendo events. That "0115D8CF" address/value is burned into the same part of my brain as the "FuCK GateWay" WinXP key.

[colordrops]

If this is what scared you from computer science, then if game genie didn't exist, something else would have scared you.

[minimaxir]

I was scared away from CS many times before I was forced to do it and it turned out I was good at it.

[ficklepickle]

Me too, my friend! Part of me wishes I got into it earlier. But another part of me wouldn't change a thing for fear of messing it up.