Let me tell a story to you, kids...
Ever since I was 2 years old, I became fascinated with computers. Those were ranging from tiny machines to huge boxes, composed of parts as tiny as a single atom. Back then, computers were seen as the next "groundbreaking" invention; you could write fan fiction novels, make 2D or 3D animations with a few clicks, watch videos online like it's your TV, make your own games it, and much more. The Internet was seen as a magical place and not as a dystopian nightmarish cesspool of social media controlled by a few (I'm looking at you, Mark Zuckerberg), making you believe what they want you to believe. It wasn't also seen as a time-sucker or a drama machine. Back then you could see content you wouldn't see on TV, like Mario from Hotel Mario or SpongeBob from SpongeBob Squarepants saying "This is not a Pokémon, this is a Gay Luigi!" or something like that.
I accidentally discovered computer programming from a tool developed by Mozilla called X-Ray Goggles. That program allowed me to click on an element over a Web page and peek into its contents - what it is made for and how it works behind the scenes. This then got me into programming basic Web pages in HTML. I learned from YouTube all the steps on how to build a basic HTML Web page from scratch. Then, I also started working on other essential Web programming languages like CSS and JavaScript where you can stylize pages to look your style and give them a brain on how they should behave according to your tastes and needs.
My parents have introduced me to Dani, a 17-year-old computer science student (at the time) who helped me program basic algorithms and solve problems in C++. Romania's Ministry of Education has a yearly "olympiad" where students from all around the country gather for a marathon on who can solve the best given problems. They are given a sheet of paper containing the instructions on what the program should be, what paramaters it should take and what it should generate as a result. Dani prepared me for this "olympiad" by teaching me basic functions in C++ and basic algorithmic thinking. I had to take a sheet of paper to write down all the variables and "be the computer myself" in simulating the algorithm - I had to follow it line by line until the end.
This has helped me and given me an opportunity in game development. I first started with a basic Snake-like game in C++, writing for a Windows console environment. Learning from that, I then started working on my own ideas. I first started with TextWorld, an ASCII-style (made of text character) RPG game - think of it like Rogue. But, I scrapped the project and went on for an even bigger idea. Pixelbuild, originally called OpenMMORPG is an (ongoing) open-source online game where you can build games inside of it with tile editing and writing code. See article: Working on Pixelbuild
