Games with strong user-hosted server ecosystems seem to be a great way for kids to start gaining serious coding experience. I went a similar path with Minecraft servers (and also first started with Runescape, both are in Java) - making a server in highschool and grossing ~$150k in a year and a half.
Before making a server, I thought coding was cool, but had never done much beyond running some basic programs. Making a server gave me clear goals that helped me learn coding much faster. "I need to figure out how to add custom bosses so my server will be more fun!" is much more fun and interesting to a teenager than "I need to figure out how to remove a Car object from this list of Car objects". There's also the very important social aspect - seeing other real people enjoy code you wrote is extremely satisfying.
And you can do really cool stuff with servers that teaches you real things, moreso than any class could. My own experience writing a ton of custom code for my Minecraft server taught me things like Unix, Redis, MySQL, web dev, reading obfuscated code, networking (like running 8 servers and writing code to pass players from one to another), deployment, basic security, pathfinding algorithms, writing scripting engines, etc. etc. all of which I had no experience with before, and would not have learned for several years otherwise. I'm graduating with my master's in CS now and still haven't been taught in class many of the things I had to figure out to make what I wanted to make. The few other devs of big servers that I knew had similar experiences - started off as beginner programmers, and gained a huge amount of experience from building out a passion project.
> I'm graduating with my master's in CS now and still haven't been taught in class many of the things I had to figure out to make what I wanted to make.
Maybe the fact that you figured it out is an indication that it doesn't have to be taught in a CS curriculum. Most of the things that you mentioned have great documentation and tutorials outside of the classroom. The fact that so many people use them without them being taught in schools should be proof enough. I think the current situation makes sense -- Computer Science education should focus on teaching the fundamentals of algorithms, data structures, discrete math and how to think conceptually about problems without regard to implementation. By learning about data structures and the like, you indirectly learn how best to use memory, redis, MySQL, write servers and whatever else.
A similar story here. I was into the game and started running a Minecraft server hosting company in high school (selling VPS'es with a Minecraft control panel, effectively). I ended up learning and doing the operations, maintenance, support, marketing, taxes--the usual jack-of-all trades of being a startup. My connections and experience there led directly to me joining another company, which has subsequently been acquired and landed me at Microsoft.
I wish more CS/programming classes, particularly pre-college, were game-oriented. A Java course I took in school had us writing a 'database' command line app that held fake enrollment information. Had that kind of thing been the only exposure to programming that I was given, I almost certainly would not have entered the field. But show someone like me a way to automate or expand something like Runescape or Minecraft? That, I'm interested in.
I learned programming at 13 for similars reasons. First I got an action replay for my Gameboy Adavance, and this opened a whole way of thinking about videos games to me: I could override the restrictions of the game and do the impossible things I always fantasized about (for example walking into the grass in the Pokemon day care). Althrough I had no idea of how it worked at the time, it really sparked something into me.
Soon after, I got into a French MMORPG called Dofus and I absolutely loved it (maybe even a bit too much?). But since this was an online game, there was no cheat codes for it. After days of searching on the internet, I joined a few small communities of other kids that were learning programming in order to write bots for that game.
It was so much fun, and got me to learn about so many aspects of programming: reverse engineering, network communication, "AI", pathfinding, complex user interfaces, RSA authentication, security (the game had a lot of anti-bot technology), making a lexer/parser in order to have my own scripting system for users and so much more. It was messy and I kept rewriting all my code as I learned better ways to do things, but it was so rewarding having hundreds of users and a community around it.
I am now a professional programmer thanks to this, even through what I was doing wasn't particularly ethical or fair towards other players and the devs of the game. But I was too young and was having too much fun to understand that. I stopped once a friend got sued by the game company for making and hosting a server emulator.
It's sad how few games let you host your own now. Pay for XBL/PSN/whatever, or the PC game co runs all the servers, or Google wants to sell you Stadia.
Fortunately, "moddable" is a genre and people want it, so it can't be killed completely. Kind of like how adding IAP "makes more money", but "doesn't have IAP" is a genre people want, too.
Hosting a long term game of freeciv was essentially the catalyst for me transitioning from math teacher/trade union official to web developer, via making some web apps For the players involved.
Hear hear. I got into coding as a young teen from running a counter-strike server and wanting to make my own adminmod plugins to do more cool stuff on the server, had to learn Small C. Then I wanted to go further than the restricted API adminmod had for plugins so I learned how to build and modify actual adminmod, then metamod, eventually was working in C++ building actual mods for half-life, was all fun and games at the time but gave me a platform for a lucrative career later in life, sweet!
I wrote a plugin to fix an issue we had on our server, then got asked to do some work on the server's website to show news and in game stats.
Wound up on the admin team helping to run it. Built a number of plugins for it. Learnt a lot of Linux/ server ops through it, and the importance of backups.
And it helped me get a job. I showed off an Angular based editor I wrote for one an achievements plugin. The plugin exported data on available triggers and rewards ("is person in this area", "do they have this item equipped", "give them this item", "spawn this mob near them"), and the editor turned this into a GUI anyone could use to quickly make/edit achievements.
I hope you mention this in interviews. I'd imagine it fits your brand very well, as it says a lot about how you approach things. I wish I was this motivated at that age.
It's eerie how similar my own introduction to programming and business matches the author's. I started playing Runescape in elementary school (I logged many thousands of hours on the game) and eventually started programming because I desperately needed to automate some aspects of the game (my parents restricted video games to weekends only, which made it extremely difficult to meet my in-game goals). After teaching myself Java, I moved onto Android development and built a mobile app development agency that I ran throughout high school and college.
People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs. Runescape has a complex economy, captivating story telling, and complex inter-player dynamics - in other words, a consequence-free playground that prepares kids for real life.
When I first started playing the game, I remember spending many hours aimlessly walking around. It felt like I was an explorer of old; I'd come across something new every hour. That feeling persisted throughout the years as I unravelled new experience after new experience: learning to become a merchant, joining a clan, killing a challenging boss for the first time, and so on. Compared to the day-to-day boredom of middle school and high school, perhaps it is only natural that kids gravitate to these online worlds.
The vast majority of people "lost in the gaming world" is not going into programming or learning anything useful. Socially, it's a lot of "GG" and insults to each others mothers. Connections in "clans" or "squads" are mostly incredibly shallow and abstract, compared to hiking or playing sports in a team or otherwise engaging in groups irl. Kids are physically underdeveloped [1], programming MMORPGs is mostly treated as cheating and not encouraged. Sure, in a billion life-years spent in games good things can happen, but compared to the time invested? Not much imo.
It's absolutely understandable why kids gravitate to these online worlds but I regret the time lost in games and if I could go back I'd really limit my gaming to brief, enjoyable sessions, and invest my energy to more challenging and ultimately rewarding things. Building skills, building real relationships.
Games give you a nice domain to think about that you get very involved in. I think they are a very good starting point for business-oriented programmers. You are very invested in the "world" and stuff that doesn't work as you want is painful. If it's painful enough you solve the problem via programming.
That's pretty much exactly how good and sustainable software business in the B2B world tend to start. As a HS student it's not very likely that you know much about the healthcare, legal or whatever domain but it is very likely that you "live" in some game domain.
I think there's some potential in cultivating this spirit and moving on to real world problems. Maybe something as silly as "talk to your family, what jobs do people have, are there painpoints you can identify, how would you solve them".
The good thing about games is that there's no bureaucracy involved and feedback loops are fast. It can be frustrating if you write an automation script that makes a task someone solves by doing manual steps (Excel entry etc.) easier and then not have it rolled out or having to wait half a year to get a report if it improved things etc.
>People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs.
I personally know multiple people that were fired from multiple jobs each because they would regularly call in or show up dead to the world specifically because of WoW. At one point I had 2 room mates, both got fired within a week of each other and would stay up playing WoW being incredibly loud in the living room for 18-20 hours at a time, often disturbing my sleep.
This is not an uncommon thing. People get incredibly addicted to these sorts of games chasing fictional lives, not contributing to society, letting their health slide into oblivion and even often spending actual money to purchase in game items. There have even been deaths and murders directly attributed to such games.
There is a reason people don't focus on the positive, those with negative impacts on their lives far outweigh those with positive I imagine.
I would love to see a game like RuneScape but with a built in "script manager". It would be sandboxed from your machine for security, but promote building little scripts to help you play the game. It would be ideal in a non-pvp game where the points don't really matter (Like Minecraft)
I have nothing to add, just pleasantly surprised to see RuneScape mentioned on here! I can credit RS for inspiring me to learn programming after I got involved with several private servers. Android development was also a natural progression for me.
A key take-away from this is that the author learned to code because he had a real incentive to do so - in order to create bots to get better at runescape and make lots of money as a side-effect of that. He quickly saw how knowing how to code gave him abilities that his peers didn't have.
Now imagine if he tried to learn java by attending a class for it - i.e. sitting there for an hour listening to some guy explain how a for loop works. Chances are he would be bored silly and never get anywhere with coding. I think its important for people learning how to code to have a genuine motivation behind it - have something you actually WANT to build. Don't just learn it so you can get a job.
"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Best comment ever for this topic. I've done the same to get in to programming via sub-game script path so I can relate myself.
Ironically, I always believed the importance of the schooling but recently started to think maybe learning by doing without the necessity is easy to forget. Maybe we need new education methodologies.
A lot of books on programming revolve around using them to make games. I remember the first coding book I picked up about Visual Basic was leading up to building a small game with it. I think there is a lot for classrooms to gain by following a similar structure.
This is a really, really ignorant comment. I learned to code in the classroom with no other motivation besides paid employment and wasn't "bored silly." I've made a very successful career for myself in the many years since.
Programmers are not different from other professions no matter how special you may feel.
The Runescape "blackmarket" was a fun world to play in!
Like the author, I got into creating Runescape bots for a bit - but never works to sell them, just made my own for fun and (in-game) profit.
As I dove deeper into the world, I came across people who would purchase a monthly VPS and install botting software on it. There were plenty of guides on how to go through - but no easy solutions for those who weren't technical.
Realizing I had an opportunity to capitalize on this - I built up a hosting company dedicated to the Runescape botting niche. Each VPS would come pre-installed with all the required software and make it dead simple to begin botting within 5 minutes or so.
At my peak, I think I had over 100 dedicated servers each running anywhere from 4-16 VPS on them. Some of my customers were using it to level up their personal accounts, others were running gold-farming operations.
The business was fairly passive, and I learned a ton from the experience. Things eventually came crumbling down when the creators of Runescape broke the bots (This would happen on occasion, but things would be up and running within a day or two normally) for a long time. I had to shut down as all my customers left overnight.
It’s when people admit to doing things like this without any hint of remorse, and no-one calls them out on it, that it becomes evident that this is really “Y Combinator News”, and not really “Hacker News”.
Oh yeah, loved to read this! Gaming and especially moddable games are a great entry into programming.
It wasn't exactly my entry, as I had programmed stuff before, but I learned a huge lot during my university time while writing a database site for World of Warcraft, which also had a distributed data collection mechanism by which hundreds of thousands of users could upload data gathered while playing the game to my site, where it would all be distilled into a database, of which a special, minified copy was then compiled and offered to be downloaded by the players right into the game, to be used while playing as a knowledge base. And alongside of that, people could query the database via a web frontend that used all the latest shit (it was 2007 or 2008, AJAX was a big deal back then, reactive layouts were in their infancy, but I had one, and I even wrote a 3D model viewer in the browser and something like Google Maps to view pre-rendered maps of the game world that looked like satellite images). That thing was 60k LOC Java (data processing and website), 30k LOC Lua (for the addon in the game), about 5k LOC ActionScript, some hundred lines of PHP and Bash scripts, and about 5-10k LOC of C++ for the native client to do data uploads and downloads.
I eventually sold it for about 60k€ including maintenance, and maintained it as a side project for 7 years total (most of the time I was also actively playing WoW) and then it was abandoned because the site didn't catch on enough among the competition, and the game itself assimilated lots of the functionality provided by my in-game database (which was named MobMap and did catch on massively with the players, I counted at least 1.1 million installs over it's lifetime) so that successful service became redundant over time and was eventually discontinued as well.
But that project brought me lots of experience. Different programming languages and runtime environments and contexts, operating a multi-server infrastructure all by myself, using the latest web tech before there were frameworks that did all the hard things for you, maintaining a codebase over a long period, reverse-engineering (to get some of the data out of the game you had to reverse the original game data file formats, and since they changed with every patch, that was a continued activity done by a very small community of people in obscure online wikis, to which I eventually started contributing), updating large numbers of client installs in a secure and reliable way, processing gigabytes of raw data per day into a concise database (I think it was about 50GB XML incoming per day and the final DB was 4GB MySQL - and it was pre-SSDs, so I had to work all in memory with that DB to get the insert and update speeds I needed), this project had it all, and I continue to draw from those lessons in my job today.
A nice story of how a young boy's enthusiasm and unhindered spirit got in the right place at the right time. I feel happy for him and his family to stumble upon this path in life - and then smashing it an building his own gold road! Alas, I also feel sad at the same time, for myself not having that opportunity and having wasted my programming skills all together after I went to university,due to outside pressures and chasing my own dick, so to say.
Holy shit! This is literally my story too. Playing runescape and writing scripts for botting programs was literally how I learned to program.
I ended up becoming a moderator on the RsBot forums and I remember Autofighter Pro when it came out. Super popular, and I didn't even realize it was made by someone the same age as me back then!
Anyways, even though I didn't make any money (I gave my scripts away for free!), I did learn a lot. I'm currently an engineer at Google and I honestly owe it to the incredible monotony of playing Runescape.
Exactly the same story here. When I was 12 or 13 I tried to use bots in Tibia to make some money on selling gold, eventually leading me to the path of trying to write my own bots for different games. I had one of the first proof of concept bot for Path of Exile which I reverse engineered myself.
I think it's really a great way to get into programming, since it's SUPER rewarding to make the computer game work for you especially if you can sell some of this work afterwards. I know for some people it can be viewed as a shady practice, but I regret nothing ;)
Just for arguments sake if this was titled "How I made $200,000 gaming Hacker news" where it's the exact same story but instead of writing for RSbots he was writing bots for a site to game HN submissions and comments and manipulating HN rankings instead we would have a completely different reaction, regardless if it happened years ago.
I like reading all the posts where people are like, "Hey, that's my story, too!" Uplifting thread.
It most certainly takes motivation (I say passion) to become a self-taught programmer. I think the "larval stage" (http://www.hacker-dictionary.com/terms/larval-stage) is critical. That transformation makes you a different kind of programmer.
I am also a self-taught programmer, but I came at it from a different angle, long before this internet age. I wasn't hacking on games (although I did do that sometimes). I was hacking the machine (PC-XT!) and the OS and software that ran on it. I was fascinated. I went from command-line, to scripting, to Microsoft C, and then it took off from there, and I've been at it professionally uninterrupted since 1990.
I didn't go back to school for CS, though. I wish I did, and am happy to see other people here have. I think that's important. I had to teach myself all the best practices (thank goodness for "Code Complete") or learn them on the job.
This probably isn't 100% kosher, but this kind of story is a good indicator when hiring. If you ask how someone got their start and it's this kind of self-motivated journey they invariably make good employees. Over the years we've most certainly noticed there is a significant difference in value between someone who chose programming because it's a job and someone where programming chose them.
wow, this is kinda similar to how I got into coding and reverse engineering. what got me into it was Ultima Online and my first serious effort at learning coding was in C# of all languages. I focused on macroing and I helped pioneer/consolidate hacks across (hundred+?) client versions. I made a macroing client with built in script compilation (C# of course) which included code completion and syntax highlighting back when it was pretty difficult to do. the main difference is I decided to become a drug dealer instead of a professional coder and though I had pretty amazing short term success I'm now considered a violent felon by the state of California.
When I was a kid, I learned so much about programming by doing those kinds of "illegal" activities. When you are young you are reckless, adventurous, you want to cheat the system. My first introduction to programming was through a bot for a MMORPG too, which was used to harvest resources. I then started to build bot for mini games where you could win prizes if you had the highest score, and resold those prizes on second hand markets. I also learned about "hacking" because it felt cool and underground. I believe kids should be protected from the heavy legal repercussion you could have by doing those things, as long as the intent was curiosity and a lack of awareness of laws. Every thing is getting more protected/regulated and it has become so easy to ruin your parents life if you are a little bit too curious. I don't really know what the solution is, but I hope my kids will be able to experience like I did !
Back in my day, games weren't online, and I didn't really have the hardware to do them justice, nor the money to buy good hardware or games either. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D from a cover-disk in a tiny postage-stamp sized window. At school we used to pass around cover-disks because we couldn't all afford to buy every mag.
Anyway, I kind of started programming from the get-go, and for a long time, programming _was_ my game. By the time I got to uni I found myself writing modding tools and editors for various games that my friends played or wanted to make mods for.
By then I had somehow found myself in a 'rogue' part of a very big company. I was surrounded by contractors making £60/hour so I started my own contracting company and was soon making way more money than I've ever made since.
Once I graduated I went into normal being-an-employee mode, and things have been getting financially worse ever since.
So its interesting, scary and confusing to read this guy's account of how he dropped out of school and has set up a stream of companies to sell his small products. Interesting, obviously. Scary, because I fear that some young people are reading it and thinking "I don't need school! I can make money!". Its the same way I get all scared when my daughters tell me how much youtubers apparently make. And confusing, because I can't spot the value in any of the products and stuff he has created recently. I guess I really don't get this whole social online world?! Perhaps I went in entirely the wrong direction all those years ago when I went and got a normal job?
Good luck to him!
Not sure what advice I'd give to a young kid now, though. To be honest, I'm not very keen on being an employee. But would you tell a kid to drop out of school and try and get funding for an app they sell to colleges etc?
I'm jealous. I made $700 for a two year project that started when I was 15. :)
When the project started, my partner and I (that's right, the $700 was for both of us) thought that $700 was an enormous sum and that we were being very clever. (This was in 1984).
After two years (18 months of which was after my partner left for college) I finally was able to bring the project over the finish line.
> thought that $700 was an enormous sum and that we were being very clever. (This was in 1984)
This made me laugh out loud, it reminds me of the prizes Atari would give software devs via Atari Program Exchange (APX) contests, some of which teens won, which would be a few hundred bucks (or sometimes more) of credit for hardware usually, plus royalties on sales of the software
For those that don't know, SCAR is a scripting IDE. It was originally created for Runescape, but it can easily be used for many other games or automated tasks. Scripts are written in the Pascal programming language (super old school!). The IDE provides the ability to focus on windows, track screen coordinates, and get pixel color values. There is a large standard library of functions- MoveMouse(), ClickMouse(), FindBitmap(), FindColor(), TypeKeys('asdf')- basically all the building blocks necessary to emulate human input. There are probably better scripting IDEs out there nowadays, but back then, this was one of the best.
SCAR was I think the first programming I did. It was very good software, really made it enjoyable. So much so that SCAR eventually _became_ the game.
Every morning before school and every afternoon when I got home I would check on my bot to see it either:
- Murdering chickens/Mining/Cutting wood
- Stuck on a tree
- Stock on the log in screen
I just remember how carefully i had to debug those scar scripts. A bug could waste night of botting, or worse do something suspicious and get your account locked.
I worry that kids growing up today have fewer opportunities like this.
I remember back around the same time in 2008ish, I was reading the old WoW Glider (Glider was a Bot for WoW) forums and came across someone who was running a massive WoW farm from Germany racking in close to 150k a year. It's so interesting to see the transition both games have gone through to embrace the Pay-To-(Somewhat)-Get-Ahead with both WoW offering Tokens ($20 for 150k gold) and RuneScape offering Bonds ($7 for 4 million GP).
It's kinda sad how games don't really work this way anymore. There are few open-world sandbox games and mods aren't really a thing. It's "free-to-play" skinner box treadmills from here on out.
Minecraft is still huge, and moddable. Sure lots of people moved to Bedrock edition on Consoles/Win10 but plenty of people still play the Java version and develop mods, resource packs, shader packs, etc.
Racing Sims like Assetto Corsa have a decent sized modding community with people designing and coding new car models, modifications to the physics/handling, audio packs, tracks/maps, etc.
Flight Sims are the same, and lots of other Simulator games.
As for open world games... Skyrim, GTAV, Empyrion, Space Engineers, Terraria, Starbound, are all moddable and have thriving communities.
Modding is very much alive and well. I'd suggest just finding any of the above games that interest you and having a play with the mod system. I find it a very entertaining and interesting way to learn more about programming due to the specific constraints of each game.
reverse engineering is your friend. i've modded all sorts of stuff that never intended it... Full Tilt Poker back in the day, MechWarrior Online, Ultima Online, etc. Learning how to hook into a program's functions and extract real-time data without destroying the stack, properly calling game functions with your own arguments, and translating your patches to new client versions is all pretty interesting and gratifying IMO.
I also got started programming writing RS bots, private servers, cheat clients, and eventually reverse engineering the game client (and sometimes other people's scripts) to write bot frameworks. I remember talking smack to the article author in the private RSBots script authors forums as a 13 year old and getting banned a few times. Good memories of a great community, with lots of people who ended up in solid careers doing impressive engineering work. Every so often I get a DM from somebody who wants to meet up IRL to grab a coffee almost 15yrs later. If anyone reading this remembers Bomb/Contra/RFTO/RECoders hit me up!
I wonder how many people got into coding because of Runescape like the author... I have almost the same origin story [1] and I know a lot of people who also do.
Wow, exactly how I got into programming too! although I made 40$ in the end instead of 200k :D The timing also matches up pretty well, I wonder if we bumped into each other on the forums. I was on the scar forums, then SRL, but the period I was most active was on villavu (iRobot), after Arga came out I started to become less active. I wasn't at all involved with the RSbot scene and knew almost nothing about it.
[+] [-] rococode|6 years ago|reply
Before making a server, I thought coding was cool, but had never done much beyond running some basic programs. Making a server gave me clear goals that helped me learn coding much faster. "I need to figure out how to add custom bosses so my server will be more fun!" is much more fun and interesting to a teenager than "I need to figure out how to remove a Car object from this list of Car objects". There's also the very important social aspect - seeing other real people enjoy code you wrote is extremely satisfying.
And you can do really cool stuff with servers that teaches you real things, moreso than any class could. My own experience writing a ton of custom code for my Minecraft server taught me things like Unix, Redis, MySQL, web dev, reading obfuscated code, networking (like running 8 servers and writing code to pass players from one to another), deployment, basic security, pathfinding algorithms, writing scripting engines, etc. etc. all of which I had no experience with before, and would not have learned for several years otherwise. I'm graduating with my master's in CS now and still haven't been taught in class many of the things I had to figure out to make what I wanted to make. The few other devs of big servers that I knew had similar experiences - started off as beginner programmers, and gained a huge amount of experience from building out a passion project.
[+] [-] wayfarer2s|6 years ago|reply
Maybe the fact that you figured it out is an indication that it doesn't have to be taught in a CS curriculum. Most of the things that you mentioned have great documentation and tutorials outside of the classroom. The fact that so many people use them without them being taught in schools should be proof enough. I think the current situation makes sense -- Computer Science education should focus on teaching the fundamentals of algorithms, data structures, discrete math and how to think conceptually about problems without regard to implementation. By learning about data structures and the like, you indirectly learn how best to use memory, redis, MySQL, write servers and whatever else.
[+] [-] connor4312|6 years ago|reply
I wish more CS/programming classes, particularly pre-college, were game-oriented. A Java course I took in school had us writing a 'database' command line app that held fake enrollment information. Had that kind of thing been the only exposure to programming that I was given, I almost certainly would not have entered the field. But show someone like me a way to automate or expand something like Runescape or Minecraft? That, I'm interested in.
[+] [-] phito|6 years ago|reply
Soon after, I got into a French MMORPG called Dofus and I absolutely loved it (maybe even a bit too much?). But since this was an online game, there was no cheat codes for it. After days of searching on the internet, I joined a few small communities of other kids that were learning programming in order to write bots for that game.
It was so much fun, and got me to learn about so many aspects of programming: reverse engineering, network communication, "AI", pathfinding, complex user interfaces, RSA authentication, security (the game had a lot of anti-bot technology), making a lexer/parser in order to have my own scripting system for users and so much more. It was messy and I kept rewriting all my code as I learned better ways to do things, but it was so rewarding having hundreds of users and a community around it.
I am now a professional programmer thanks to this, even through what I was doing wasn't particularly ethical or fair towards other players and the devs of the game. But I was too young and was having too much fun to understand that. I stopped once a friend got sued by the game company for making and hosting a server emulator.
[+] [-] PostOnce|6 years ago|reply
Fortunately, "moddable" is a genre and people want it, so it can't be killed completely. Kind of like how adding IAP "makes more money", but "doesn't have IAP" is a genre people want, too.
[+] [-] wilsonrocks|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattsfrey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehbeard|6 years ago|reply
I wrote a plugin to fix an issue we had on our server, then got asked to do some work on the server's website to show news and in game stats.
Wound up on the admin team helping to run it. Built a number of plugins for it. Learnt a lot of Linux/ server ops through it, and the importance of backups.
And it helped me get a job. I showed off an Angular based editor I wrote for one an achievements plugin. The plugin exported data on available triggers and rewards ("is person in this area", "do they have this item equipped", "give them this item", "spawn this mob near them"), and the editor turned this into a GUI anyone could use to quickly make/edit achievements.
[+] [-] varrock|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conjectures|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justsoamazing|6 years ago|reply
People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs. Runescape has a complex economy, captivating story telling, and complex inter-player dynamics - in other words, a consequence-free playground that prepares kids for real life.
When I first started playing the game, I remember spending many hours aimlessly walking around. It felt like I was an explorer of old; I'd come across something new every hour. That feeling persisted throughout the years as I unravelled new experience after new experience: learning to become a merchant, joining a clan, killing a challenging boss for the first time, and so on. Compared to the day-to-day boredom of middle school and high school, perhaps it is only natural that kids gravitate to these online worlds.
[+] [-] UweSchmidt|6 years ago|reply
It's absolutely understandable why kids gravitate to these online worlds but I regret the time lost in games and if I could go back I'd really limit my gaming to brief, enjoyable sessions, and invest my energy to more challenging and ultimately rewarding things. Building skills, building real relationships.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-46019429
[+] [-] kriro|6 years ago|reply
That's pretty much exactly how good and sustainable software business in the B2B world tend to start. As a HS student it's not very likely that you know much about the healthcare, legal or whatever domain but it is very likely that you "live" in some game domain.
I think there's some potential in cultivating this spirit and moving on to real world problems. Maybe something as silly as "talk to your family, what jobs do people have, are there painpoints you can identify, how would you solve them".
The good thing about games is that there's no bureaucracy involved and feedback loops are fast. It can be frustrating if you write an automation script that makes a task someone solves by doing manual steps (Excel entry etc.) easier and then not have it rolled out or having to wait half a year to get a report if it improved things etc.
[+] [-] ryanmercer|6 years ago|reply
I personally know multiple people that were fired from multiple jobs each because they would regularly call in or show up dead to the world specifically because of WoW. At one point I had 2 room mates, both got fired within a week of each other and would stay up playing WoW being incredibly loud in the living room for 18-20 hours at a time, often disturbing my sleep.
This is not an uncommon thing. People get incredibly addicted to these sorts of games chasing fictional lives, not contributing to society, letting their health slide into oblivion and even often spending actual money to purchase in game items. There have even been deaths and murders directly attributed to such games.
There is a reason people don't focus on the positive, those with negative impacts on their lives far outweigh those with positive I imagine.
[+] [-] reustle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] McDev|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] brailsafe|6 years ago|reply
Intro to Programming or how to develop an anxiety disorder wondering all day if your script broke or you got banned.
[+] [-] world32|6 years ago|reply
Now imagine if he tried to learn java by attending a class for it - i.e. sitting there for an hour listening to some guy explain how a for loop works. Chances are he would be bored silly and never get anywhere with coding. I think its important for people learning how to code to have a genuine motivation behind it - have something you actually WANT to build. Don't just learn it so you can get a job.
[+] [-] ValleyOfTheMtns|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bthrn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mertnesvat|6 years ago|reply
Ironically, I always believed the importance of the schooling but recently started to think maybe learning by doing without the necessity is easy to forget. Maybe we need new education methodologies.
[+] [-] michannne|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astura|6 years ago|reply
Programmers are not different from other professions no matter how special you may feel.
[+] [-] tjbiddle|6 years ago|reply
Like the author, I got into creating Runescape bots for a bit - but never works to sell them, just made my own for fun and (in-game) profit.
As I dove deeper into the world, I came across people who would purchase a monthly VPS and install botting software on it. There were plenty of guides on how to go through - but no easy solutions for those who weren't technical.
Realizing I had an opportunity to capitalize on this - I built up a hosting company dedicated to the Runescape botting niche. Each VPS would come pre-installed with all the required software and make it dead simple to begin botting within 5 minutes or so.
At my peak, I think I had over 100 dedicated servers each running anywhere from 4-16 VPS on them. Some of my customers were using it to level up their personal accounts, others were running gold-farming operations.
The business was fairly passive, and I learned a ton from the experience. Things eventually came crumbling down when the creators of Runescape broke the bots (This would happen on occasion, but things would be up and running within a day or two normally) for a long time. I had to shut down as all my customers left overnight.
[+] [-] teddyh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjs278|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Slartie|6 years ago|reply
It wasn't exactly my entry, as I had programmed stuff before, but I learned a huge lot during my university time while writing a database site for World of Warcraft, which also had a distributed data collection mechanism by which hundreds of thousands of users could upload data gathered while playing the game to my site, where it would all be distilled into a database, of which a special, minified copy was then compiled and offered to be downloaded by the players right into the game, to be used while playing as a knowledge base. And alongside of that, people could query the database via a web frontend that used all the latest shit (it was 2007 or 2008, AJAX was a big deal back then, reactive layouts were in their infancy, but I had one, and I even wrote a 3D model viewer in the browser and something like Google Maps to view pre-rendered maps of the game world that looked like satellite images). That thing was 60k LOC Java (data processing and website), 30k LOC Lua (for the addon in the game), about 5k LOC ActionScript, some hundred lines of PHP and Bash scripts, and about 5-10k LOC of C++ for the native client to do data uploads and downloads. I eventually sold it for about 60k€ including maintenance, and maintained it as a side project for 7 years total (most of the time I was also actively playing WoW) and then it was abandoned because the site didn't catch on enough among the competition, and the game itself assimilated lots of the functionality provided by my in-game database (which was named MobMap and did catch on massively with the players, I counted at least 1.1 million installs over it's lifetime) so that successful service became redundant over time and was eventually discontinued as well.
But that project brought me lots of experience. Different programming languages and runtime environments and contexts, operating a multi-server infrastructure all by myself, using the latest web tech before there were frameworks that did all the hard things for you, maintaining a codebase over a long period, reverse-engineering (to get some of the data out of the game you had to reverse the original game data file formats, and since they changed with every patch, that was a continued activity done by a very small community of people in obscure online wikis, to which I eventually started contributing), updating large numbers of client installs in a secure and reliable way, processing gigabytes of raw data per day into a concise database (I think it was about 50GB XML incoming per day and the final DB was 4GB MySQL - and it was pre-SSDs, so I had to work all in memory with that DB to get the insert and update speeds I needed), this project had it all, and I continue to draw from those lessons in my job today.
[+] [-] fbi-director|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rczhang|6 years ago|reply
I ended up becoming a moderator on the RsBot forums and I remember Autofighter Pro when it came out. Super popular, and I didn't even realize it was made by someone the same age as me back then!
Anyways, even though I didn't make any money (I gave my scripts away for free!), I did learn a lot. I'm currently an engineer at Google and I honestly owe it to the incredible monotony of playing Runescape.
[+] [-] methyl|6 years ago|reply
I think it's really a great way to get into programming, since it's SUPER rewarding to make the computer game work for you especially if you can sell some of this work afterwards. I know for some people it can be viewed as a shady practice, but I regret nothing ;)
[+] [-] Crazyontap|6 years ago|reply
Just a thought to put things into perspective.
[+] [-] redleggedfrog|6 years ago|reply
It most certainly takes motivation (I say passion) to become a self-taught programmer. I think the "larval stage" (http://www.hacker-dictionary.com/terms/larval-stage) is critical. That transformation makes you a different kind of programmer.
I am also a self-taught programmer, but I came at it from a different angle, long before this internet age. I wasn't hacking on games (although I did do that sometimes). I was hacking the machine (PC-XT!) and the OS and software that ran on it. I was fascinated. I went from command-line, to scripting, to Microsoft C, and then it took off from there, and I've been at it professionally uninterrupted since 1990.
I didn't go back to school for CS, though. I wish I did, and am happy to see other people here have. I think that's important. I had to teach myself all the best practices (thank goodness for "Code Complete") or learn them on the job.
This probably isn't 100% kosher, but this kind of story is a good indicator when hiring. If you ask how someone got their start and it's this kind of self-motivated journey they invariably make good employees. Over the years we've most certainly noticed there is a significant difference in value between someone who chose programming because it's a job and someone where programming chose them.
[+] [-] rootw0rm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowracle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willvarfar|6 years ago|reply
Back in my day, games weren't online, and I didn't really have the hardware to do them justice, nor the money to buy good hardware or games either. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D from a cover-disk in a tiny postage-stamp sized window. At school we used to pass around cover-disks because we couldn't all afford to buy every mag.
Anyway, I kind of started programming from the get-go, and for a long time, programming _was_ my game. By the time I got to uni I found myself writing modding tools and editors for various games that my friends played or wanted to make mods for.
By then I had somehow found myself in a 'rogue' part of a very big company. I was surrounded by contractors making £60/hour so I started my own contracting company and was soon making way more money than I've ever made since.
Once I graduated I went into normal being-an-employee mode, and things have been getting financially worse ever since.
So its interesting, scary and confusing to read this guy's account of how he dropped out of school and has set up a stream of companies to sell his small products. Interesting, obviously. Scary, because I fear that some young people are reading it and thinking "I don't need school! I can make money!". Its the same way I get all scared when my daughters tell me how much youtubers apparently make. And confusing, because I can't spot the value in any of the products and stuff he has created recently. I guess I really don't get this whole social online world?! Perhaps I went in entirely the wrong direction all those years ago when I went and got a normal job?
Good luck to him!
Not sure what advice I'd give to a young kid now, though. To be honest, I'm not very keen on being an employee. But would you tell a kid to drop out of school and try and get funding for an app they sell to colleges etc?
[+] [-] mrunkel|6 years ago|reply
When the project started, my partner and I (that's right, the $700 was for both of us) thought that $700 was an enormous sum and that we were being very clever. (This was in 1984).
After two years (18 months of which was after my partner left for college) I finally was able to bring the project over the finish line.
[+] [-] ryanmercer|6 years ago|reply
This made me laugh out loud, it reminds me of the prizes Atari would give software devs via Atari Program Exchange (APX) contests, some of which teens won, which would be a few hundred bucks (or sometimes more) of credit for hardware usually, plus royalties on sales of the software
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|6 years ago|reply
Anyone remember SCAR?
[+] [-] Chromozon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertely|6 years ago|reply
Every morning before school and every afternoon when I got home I would check on my bot to see it either:
- Murdering chickens/Mining/Cutting wood
- Stuck on a tree
- Stock on the log in screen
I just remember how carefully i had to debug those scar scripts. A bug could waste night of botting, or worse do something suspicious and get your account locked.
I worry that kids growing up today have fewer opportunities like this.
[+] [-] phasecode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|6 years ago|reply
That's what happened to me. I started playing games, then modifying them, then writing my own, then the coding consumed all my time.
https://www.classicempire.com/history.html
[+] [-] siliconc0w|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sendotsh|6 years ago|reply
Racing Sims like Assetto Corsa have a decent sized modding community with people designing and coding new car models, modifications to the physics/handling, audio packs, tracks/maps, etc.
Flight Sims are the same, and lots of other Simulator games.
As for open world games... Skyrim, GTAV, Empyrion, Space Engineers, Terraria, Starbound, are all moddable and have thriving communities.
Then there's the entire Steam genre of moddable games: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Moddable#p=0&tab=TopS...
Modding is very much alive and well. I'd suggest just finding any of the above games that interest you and having a play with the mod system. I find it a very entertaining and interesting way to learn more about programming due to the specific constraints of each game.
[+] [-] rootw0rm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Profan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contrahax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vzhou842|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://victorzhou.com/blog/how-i-became-a-programmer/
[+] [-] jeremysalwen|6 years ago|reply