Prodigy is what got me into programming. While trying to find something to do online, I came across their message boards for game programming.

I vividly remember following directions and downloading files to play a game someone else uploaded for QBasic. The first page of code were nothing but comments, so I naively assumed that computers could just "understand" prose and display it on screen.

The message boards were extremely helpful (where Red Baron was released!), and even had gurus who wrapped their names with tildes to distinguish themselves.

~Eric~