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by larrybolt 4490 days ago
Personally, it's not that I don't enjoy gaming, but I feel guilty for the time I "wasted" afterwards. Every other activity such as cleaning up, going out for a walk or even reading a good book seems to be more rewarding and useful than playing a game.

I tend to give that as the reason I started teaching myself programming, and later I won't allow my children to waste days playing games. But let them do more productive activities on the pc such as video-editing, messing with photoshop, chatting with foreigners (the good old days on IRC..)
2 comments
ambigu0us 4490 days ago
I think games are different for everyone. For some it's recreational, while others, not so much. Some people it's a stress relief or a learning tool, but I can see how some games can be a waste of time as well.

I agree that whenever I have kids, I'll be sure to teach them coding or editing. The way society and the future job market is evolving, it looks like those tools will be way more beneficial then learning Spanish or French in high school. A moot point, but somewhat realistic.

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JonD23 4490 days ago
Video games were my gateway into computers. I contribute my path as a developer to when I started playing the Quake 1 demo in 96. I remember getting the demo from a pc mag cd, and spending all day playing. One day I wanted to start learning to make my own mods. So that started me on my development path.

But I totally agree, I hope I don't let me kids play as much games as I did. I got lucky, but everyone is different.

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larrybolt 4490 days ago
That is exactly the way I tried introducing more useful alternatives to spending time behind a pc to my younger brother and sister. By showing them how they could write mods or even complete games with programs such as Cinema4D, Maya, Photoshop, Unity...

It didn't stick very long, but I hope I had some positive influence on their life in that aspect.

It is a very interesting subject though on how developers got into development! My first programming experiences was with mIRC and its funky scripting language to make simple irc bots.

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