Love Letter to Computer, My Childhood
My dad got a cs major in his 40s. When I was a kid (2000s), he didn’t teach me how to use a computer. Instead, he bought magazines and a bunch of CD-ROM software collections.
Back then, I loved having fun and experimenting with software and games! Like Macromedia Flash, made scrolling shooters with its ActionScript, Multimedia Fusion, made silly platformer games haha. Modding almost every games I’ve played. Make some glitch with cheat engine or reverse engineer it with Hex Editor like those hacker wannabe!
Autisticly open every folder in program files, system files, even registry editor in Windows! Ricing Windows XP, changes the boot logo and themes becomes more futuristic. Back then, I even asked my dad to buy the Ubuntu custom disc with the 3D cube desktop environment! My desktop PC didn’t even have a case, just because It didn’t feel techy enough.
I wasn’t even on Facebook or any social media. My childhood was spent in old forums, old web, scrolling through CNET looking for free software, scavenging through ModDB, Newgrounds, Miniclip, mIRC, or somewhere unknown. I made my first website with my dad when I was 10! With little html, old Adobe Dreamweaver, old Czech website builder Webnode, and got free domain dot tk.
Going to bookstores, the first books I looked for were always about computers, tutorials on how to make cool things, encyclopedias about how computers and internet work.
Imagine a kid reading a 500-page Turbo Pascal book like some fairy tale. That was me! I’m still not good at programming at all, but I love it not because I want to be a cracked, but just because I love how cool it is.
My childhood frens were just two or three. My childhood was 90% inside the computer, 7% in the bedroom, and 3% outside.
Unfortunately, adulting made me drift away from my love for computer. Every time I got autistic about it, society looked at me like I was some extraterrestrial brain or something. Quarter-life crisis, society, and people in general made me depressed af, and I got psyoped hard because of it. As someone who used to be called a ‘gifted child’ it sucks.
And now, I’ve come to this bubble internet, looking through tech again… I don’t know, but it feels nostalgic to me. So many youngs are into computer, doing incredible stuff, and the world is about to change.
I love to see someone curious, someone autistic enough about their hobby, craft, building, or just yapping nonsense about tech. I don’t know, but being here makes me feel like I’m back into my playground. I’m not even a cs student. I’m just a dropout art student lmao.
I know, lately the landscape feels kinda off and slop or whatever you name it, but… You, you, and you all, please don’t give up on what you love doing. You are superduper cool. Let the normies do normie things, but never let yourself become one! Don’t be like me, who once threw it all away just to ‘fit’ into society. It dims your soul, and it’s not even worth it.
I love computer so much like it’s unreal!
And I love my dad! He is an amazing person. He pension from teacher earlier this year! :D