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by mezzie2
475 days ago
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I'm curious how old you are? Mostly because a lot of my personal interests/ability to self-develop was related to Internet access. (My parents made VERY QUESTIONABLE financial choices and opted to pay for Internet access instead of food or clothing so I might have been freezing and my clothes all had holes in them but I could go online to talk to other smart kids.) Also because I remember me + my parents being sat down when I was in elementary school and having my options talked about. In middle school once I was proven to have programming and math aptitude during the dot com boom, educational experts came to us and discussed specific gifted learning options (including things like private schools, skipping grades, or even pulling me out of school altogether for private instruction). None of this was initiated by my parents - it was brought to us. This was in the 90s. |
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I did teach myself programming in the 90s, after my friend loaned me his floppy disk with all his QBASIC stuff. Then dabbled in PHP, MySQL, etc.
We had one computer programming class in high school and I never got to take it because I had too many other electives. I don’t think it would have done much for me by the time I could have taken it.
It never really occurred to me as a teen that I could use the internet for getting really good at academics or broader “self-development” - I guess I just cared about video games and making money. Parents’ attitude was as long as I was getting As and going to college they didn’t need to do anything.