[dlyons]

13 year old me learned to write code on FurryMUCK. No idea at the time what a Furry was, or why strangers in game were trying to "yiff" me.

It was incredible though; I was big into books like Redwall, Watership Down, etc. So a social game of animals seemed fun.

The language was MUF; Multi User Forth. Stack based, push, pop, etc.

I helped port software into other MUCKs, like FluffMUCK. The people there were so kind and taught me all sorts of things about Linux, programming, building PCs, etc. I wouldn't be who I am today without the early MUCK communities.

[fouc]

I thought MUF was magical. Like I was a wizard chanting incantations. It was my first experience with an interpreted language.

As a teenager it was amazing to telnet into a TinyMUCK and then launch a line-based editor and start coding in it. And not needing to compile the program like C.

Remember that editor?

http://www.rdwarf.com/users/mink/muckman/muf3.html

[dlyons]

Oh wow, this is so great. Thank you for this. I haven't read this in 25+ years.

The line editor experience of building a stack and calling a function, I have not really found again. Lisp REPLs are nice but something about using the stack abstraction as the whole language.

So many amazing memories.

It was summer, 1994. I was 12, we had to move houses and my parents let me buy a 50ft phone cord to connect a modem in my room. My mom was a teacher and found me access to our local university's Internet dialup. Dialup terminal programs to connect into their VMS server. VMS had telnet which was enough to connect to all the MUDs I read about on my local BBS. I think I had just upgraded to 14.4, 28.8 wasn't even out yet.

During the summers, I would stay up all night, lay in bed pretending asleep when my dad had to get up for work in the morning, and then get back up to keep at it.

Entire virtual worlds to explore, basically text MMOs, in 1994. I was in Kentucky, felt like the only person who knew. It changed the course of my life forever, just the magic of it all.

Lots of "anthropomorphic Furry" MUCKs and TrekMUSE.

The best of times.

[fouc]

Haha awesome, I had nearly the same setup in '94-'95, I was in a small rural town for that year but my mom worked for the local college. It was a dialup into a VAX/VMS where the only thing I could do was telnet.

I remember playing a ferengi cadet at trekmuse 1701 and once stole a starship lol. Also fond memories of battletech mud & mtrek.

[dlyons]

Haha wow, I played a Ferengi as well! Who knows, we may have crossed paths.