so cool read IRC Bot in HN front page.
I remember when I started to program, hacking irc scripts for fun, thanks for the post, remembers me good times. (RIP t7ds)
One of the things that certainly contributed for keeping my interest in programming was the quick feedback. No need for confusing setups, just open the editor and start doing something. I know a lot of people that started this way and are good programmers nowadays.
- Start wasting lots of time in MSN chatrooms
- Parents cancel MSN and switch to local ISP. Mourn loss of chatrooms.
- Discover IRC using the mIRC client
- Start playing around with mIRC scripting
- Get into Linux because that's what the crowd I hung out with on IRC was using
- Switch to epic and BitchX and start scripting on this clients
- Get into eggdrops and start scripting those and then start looking through the actual source code and making changes
- Start writing my own bots
Amazing how much my current career as a software dev is owed to things I learned because I liked "wasting" time chatting online.