[adj]

Instead of the internet, I lurked around the local library for game magazines with source code listings in the back.

I love this. I did the exact same thing at my local library looking for books on BASIC (now I lurk on HN instead of at the library). I always had trouble getting the code listings to work because they were usually written for a slightly different version of BASIC than what I had. Without the internet there wasn't really any way for me to figure out what the problem was so there was plenty of trial and error.

One of my best memories was finally buying Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe. I remember reading almost the whole book the first day I got it and trying out all the great code examples. This was the first time I really saw how real games were made. It basically runs though making a game like Wolfenstein 3D only two years after it was released. I think it would be a struggle to write a book about how to make a triple A title from 2010.

Near the end of high school I stopped coding but when I got back into it several years later, I was amazed at the resources and tools freely available on the internet.