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Re:Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do... by kylecazar on Saturday April 25, 2020 @09:31PM (#22983438)
My first language was a Pascal-like DSL, learned for the sole purpose of mining ores while I was at school.

I think I should credit my salary to Jagex.

Re:Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do... by chrisandchips on Saturday April 25, 2020 @09:57PM (#22983595)
Thats too funny. And honestly, the fact that the game translates to the real world directly like that just blows my mind. I met a guy at a hackthon during uni who ran Sals realm of runescape. He told me that the selling the website basically payed his (canadian) tuition in full
Re:Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do... by Drip33 on Saturday April 25, 2020 @10:13PM (#22983711)
My Runescape money making adventures paid for most of my life, even to this day.
Re:Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do... by bsagdiyev on Saturday April 25, 2020 @09:58PM (#22983602)
Kaitnieks SCAR right? I was pretty involved in the cheating scene for RuneScape since around 2001, which I credit with getting me in to tech.
Re:Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do... by tylerlh on Sunday April 26, 2020 @12:06AM (#22984322)
Ditto. AutoRune and later SCAR, Sleepwalker, et al were huge inspirations to teenage me. I spent a lot of time bugging Dylock and Kaitnieks for Delphi help over IRC.

When I had some downtime a year or so ago, it was really interesting to revisit the reverse-engineered clients (a la RuneBot, PowerBot, etc) and taking a look at how that was done then and now. Actually made me somewhat working with Java again.

Very cool to see other folks who found themselves on a similar path thanks to that community!

Re:Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do... by kylecazar on Saturday April 25, 2020 @10:09PM (#22983679)
That's the one! Wow. I credit that early exposure for the same.