[yarone]

I'm with you guys here. My first program was an AOL...program. Learned how to program by copying some kids I met in private AOL chat rooms.

My first commercial program (shareware) was a legit AOL add-on (AoLOL!). Designed, built, and redesigned several times before I had the courage to ship it. Visual Basic 3.0. Used Win32 API to attach my program to the AOL toolbar (for AOL 2.5 and AOL 3.0). Had folks from all around the country send me a $14.95 check via US mail.

[sejje]

I was programming in VB6 (and hanging out in the vb6 private chat on AOL) in these days. I made a custom mp3 player with chat coms & feedback called 3pm, an AIM account storage utility (AIMs were like our NFTs I guess) called whorehouse (I was 16).

I had a couple of "naughty" projects at the time, that netted me some cash as well. Stated generically, automated affiliate marketing using AOL. I made about $6,000 my junior and senior years of high school, and a couple of friends did as well using my program. It was fully hands-off besides having to restart it sometimes, although the code felt like a house of cards, even to me then as a total novice programmer.