[MrMatters]

I was first introduced to computers at age 9 (I'm not that old, the internet had been around for a little bit) when my "girlfriend" got me to talk to her on a chat site over summer break.

I started getting more and more interested in the things I saw like the way the chat programs worked (they were java applets), exploring them as a user and mod and learning how to "hack" them. It wasn't long before this lead me to communities where I was also shown HTML and I started learning about it.

When I was 10-11, I got into modding boards like the InvisionFree ones, which taught me a lot more about HTML and exposed me to JavaScript as you only had limited access to them so that's how all the modding was done, and a lot of those communities intersected with ones about making your own forum systems and/or modifying forums you had more access to (like hosting your own phpBB or IPB forums) which got me interested in PHP and MySQL.

By that point I'd heard a lot about C, etc. too and I was a lot more curious about computers than I was my schoolwork so I'd spend as much time learning about everything I could as possible. I started migrating to more general programming and hacking oriented communities when I was 12 and would stay up literally all night most nights and make up the sleep on the weekends, and I haven't had a proper sleeping schedule since.