[HN Gopher] Breaking computers taught me to build them
___________________________________________________________________
Breaking computers taught me to build them
Author : dshacker
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-04-03 04:06 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (danielsada.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (danielsada.tech)
| evandena wrote:
| Counter-Strike. I learned basic HTML for a clan web page, then
| PHP to run the forums. I eventually wanted to host my own server,
| so I learned Linux back then too. Probably 25 years ago.
| siez18 wrote:
| Games and HTML.
|
| I loved playing computer games when I was young, and in school,
| they were also teaching us HTML to make cool webpages. I was
| naturally curious so I started learning things on my own by
| reading computer books.
|
| In parallel I loved gaming so much I wanted to make my own games.
| I started making small stuff on flash after reading online and
| learned a little bit of ActionScript.
|
| That made me realize that coding is really hard to learn on my
| own (for my dumb brain) so I thought to check my local computer
| institutes for basic courses. Found a small coaching center.
| Instead of coding, they convinced me that I needed to learn
| hardware first and impressed a teenage kid by showing simple
| tricks like breaking windows password, upgrading hardware, etc.
|
| So I did that course for 6 months and to my surprise I enjoyed it
| as well and learned a lot on my own too. Finally, I started
| building computers for a living and started a small home-computer
| repair venture with my friend (during college).
| shw1n wrote:
| Neopets, created an account around 2nd grade.
|
| Eventually learned HTML to spruce up my profile.
|
| Then discovered running a "mall" to earn Neopoints and so I
| handcrafted a banner in MS Paint and manually mapped pixels for
| turning it into a link map
|
| Then had my neopoints stolen by a fake website, tried to recreate
| fake website for myself, leading to... CTFs, hacking &
| cybersecurity
| howard941 wrote:
| Building an S-100 system from kits. Soldering all of the edge
| connectors to the IMSAI motherboard taught me to solder and the
| power supply taught me to mistrust big electrolytic caps.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| For me is was work. First DOS, then Win 3. Years later, when the
| CEO of the company I worked for arranged for a really good Dell
| computer discount with financing, many of my co-workers purchased
| them, mostly for their kids. Many of those kids broke these
| machines (Most of them had Win ME) and I became the IT guy. I
| already had a PC for several years, which I broke a few times and
| had to gather info to make repairs, so I was glad to help and
| learned a ton of new things about computers. A shout out to
| Maximum PC Magazine, who had a wealth of info every month. Sad to
| see it's gone.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| Note: title is currently borked, it should be
|
| > How breaking computers taught me to build them....
|
| but it is
|
| > Taught me to build them...
| emptybits wrote:
| "BASIC Computer Games" by David H. Ahl
| philiplu wrote:
| I spent so much time typing in the Star Trek game from that
| book into a Commodore Pet, and then so much time playing the
| game. Hunt the Wumpus as well. Good times
| 123pie123 wrote:
| getting a bench engineer job fixing PCs (286/ 386) made PCs in to
| a hobby. it's was always (90%) the capacitors,
|
| I'd fix PC's then play around with them - i still remember how
| badly incompatible conner and seagate HDDs where, that tried to
| share the same IDE cable
| aerhardt wrote:
| I tinkered much like OP, and went on to do a professional trade
| course in PC building and maintenance when I was like fifteen. I
| also built websites. However, I didn't follow through and studied
| business management in college. It was only in my late 20's when
| I learned proper programming and developed a love for computer
| science with Harvard's CS50. I went on to do a masters in
| software engineering at Harvard Extension, and now I'm doing the
| OMSCS at Georgia Tech. Unlike OP it took me a while to connect
| with my love for computers. It's been a very haphazard journey!
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Typing in listings from magazines for my 48k Sinclair ZX
| Spectrum. Debugging them (there were almost always misprints or
| genuine coding mistakes) taught me a lot.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| if you didn't debug, you'd have to wait a week and hope they'd
| print a correction
| dcminter wrote:
| My Dad was a software developer in the UK with Honeywell in the
| 1960s and after a stint with Wang (yes, I know, ha ha) went
| independent. As a result we had a variety of Wang minis in the
| house in the mid-70s when I was a toddler, which must have been
| fairly unusual. I learnt to write on green-banded continuous
| stationery!
|
| Thereafter it was the more conventional British route into
| computing via Clive Sinclair's cheap but, er, cheap, ZX81 for
| me... but those minis lit the fuse.
| ergonaught wrote:
| I thought my mom decided for reasons lost to me that I should
| have a computer, and bought one for me in 1982 or so, but
| according to her it was entirely my idea. No clue what prompted
| it. Perhaps reading science fiction.
|
| Precisely zero influences on this from family.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I was obsessed with science fiction when I was a kid, and math
| and computers in particular. I saved up my pocket money to buy a
| TRS-80 Color Computer II, and learned to program in BASIC over
| the summer holidays. Later I learned 6809 Assembly, and Color
| Forth on the same machine.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I had a computer in my bedroom and I wanted to make it efficient
| so I went into /system32 and started deleting every file that
| didn't seem useful
| geoffbp wrote:
| I did this as well. Good times!
|
| config.sys and autoexec.bat?
| arionhardison wrote:
| In 6th grade i stole my teachers car to go get a girl some lemon
| heads...this was just the latest such incident so my teachers
| said I had to stand in the corner for the rest of the year; but
| my computer teacher Ms. Melton said I could spend the time in the
| computer lab and she started teaching me JS. Then on work study
| day she sent me to her friends at a local ISP and they gave me an
| internship etc... etc... 30 years later and I am a software eng.
| llbbdd wrote:
| Did she like the lemon heads?
| thirdgear209 wrote:
| I started programming at the age of 10 on a commodore computer.
| Did not have any friends or family members in the field. A lot of
| hacking, experimentation, and continual improvement. I still take
| the same approach today.
|
| I am a big believer that for many of us, curiosity, a desire to
| learn, and no fear of failure are key to learning. I happen to be
| work in the industry full time, however I apply the same skillset
| towards art, cooking, welding/fabrication. The ability to analyze
| and problem solve is really what it is about.
|
| 'Learn to learn' is the advice I give anyone entering the field,
| and oh yeah, drop the ego as that tends to hold you back from
| your potential; we are are continually learning...
| txdv wrote:
| mIRC Scripting Language programming.
| mintplant wrote:
| When I was around 4, my dad, an aerospace engineer, passed down
| his old Windows 95 computer to us. I loved rummaging through
| C:\Windows and finding all the little "hidden" utilities, it was
| like a toybox. When I was around 6, he brought home a binder of
| programming lessons and a worn copy of "Sams' Teach Yourself
| Visual Basic 6 in 24 Hours" from work and started going through
| them with me. Eventually I moved on to reading every computer-
| related book I could get my hands on in the public library's
| small, very out-of-date collection.
|
| I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten the early start that I
| did. I'd be a completely different person without that.
| wavemode wrote:
| In middle school my parents got me a graphing calculator for
| Algebra. Couldn't figure out a damn thing about how to write
| programs on it, and I didn't really have much computer or
| internet access at home, but I was curious.
|
| In the school computer lab I did some searching and found a
| programming guide for that model of calculator on some university
| website. While printing out my assignment I also secretly printed
| out the guide and hid it under the other papers (not supposed to
| be wasting ink on a personal print job). Took it home and was
| glued to it for months.
|
| Eventually I was able to program the game Snake. It ran slow as
| hell, but it ran.
| changhis wrote:
| I was 9 when I first moved to the US. I couldn't speak English so
| the teacher stuck me in front of the classroom computer. It was
| one of those monochrome all-in-one console things that must have
| been from the 80's and the only thing on there was Q-basic. To
| pass the time I followed the tutorials to create my own MUD. And
| that's how I learned BASIC before English.
| piva00 wrote:
| A bit of background: I grew up in Brazil between the years
| transitioning from full protectionism (import substitution) to a
| more freeing trade economy.
|
| When I was around 9 I discovered that the videogame my dad had, a
| Gradiente Expert, could boot into some kind of BASIC REPL. The
| machine was a clone of the MSX re-branded in the Brazilian market
| to be allowed within the import substitution policy.
|
| I had barely learnt to read but I got very, very excited seeing
| the command line pop-up. My dad worked in the telecom industry,
| and I had seen him many times working on a command line. I
| flipped through the manual and eventually figured out how to make
| the computer write characters on the screen.
|
| From then on I spent years obsessed with learning how to program
| on the MSX, then on the 386 running MS-DOS at home, eventually
| Win95 appeared, and since my dad worked in telecom we were some
| of the first ones I knew to get an internet connection.
|
| On the web I learnt HTML, CGI, then ASP, and later PHP. I think I
| was about 12-13 when I tried to learn C/C++ for modding games,
| some 3D modeling, etc., eventually culminating with me getting a
| job as an intern/youth apprentice scheme at 15-16 to help
| programming a factory's intranet systems to comply with ISO9001.
|
| My dad never really pushed me to work with computers or anything,
| I think I was just a very curious kid who loved science, and also
| tinkering and building stuff. I realised only later in my 30s how
| it all connected, building with coding was probably immensely
| satisfying for me as a kid, very fast feedback on what works or
| not, many puzzles to solve, and virtually free of expenses that I
| couldn't afford.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Our math teacher in UK high school c.1976 asked us if anyone want
| to join him for an adult education programming class being taught
| by the local university (Durham), and a bunch of us did. This was
| batch mode (punched card) PL/1 programming - submit job to
| operator and an hour later get a fanfold printout of the result.
| A couple of us (incl. me) had parents that worked at the
| University, and got the computer dept. to agree to allow us high
| school kids to go in on weekends etc to use the Unix system
| (online access) there, after the initial adult education class
| had ended. We spent a lot of time there, taught ourselves to
| program in C, and caused some amount of trouble by messing with
| the unix system - brute force password cracking, and on one
| occasion accidentally deleting the /etc/passwd file, which
| luckily they had backed up - they were surprisingly tolerant of
| all this and didn't kick us out!
|
| In March 1978 the first issue of "Personal Computer World"
| magazine came out, featuring the just released NASCOM-1 kit
| computer on the front cover. I'd just inherited 200 UKP from my
| grandmother, so sent it off and got myself a kit. This was a 1
| MHz Z-80 system that came with 2 KB of memory (1KB for user, 1KB
| for system), and a built-in monitor program that let you enter
| programs as hex machine code. The computer itself came as bare
| board, bag of components to solder, and no case. It used a TV for
| display and cassette recorder for program/data storage. You'd
| hand assemble your program on paper, then enter the codes and run
| it. There wasn't a whole lot you could do in 1KB, but I remember
| coding things like a hangman game, and memorizing the op-codes
| well enough to program short things directly in hex.
|
| I then went to college, taking Math & Comp Sci, graduating in
| 1982, and lucking into a dream job at Acorn Computers, which
| started my career as developer.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Using an HP 3000 at a local college via teletype terminal during
| summer gifted & talented program.
|
| The school eventually got some TRS-80s, and I did a summer
| program where we passed an Apple ][ off as a robotics program,
| and I mowed grass summers and eventually bought a Commodore
| Vic-20 and later a TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-1 (in retrospect,
| should have waited and gotten the Model 100).
|
| Got Inman's book on Apple Machine Language, and a couple of other
| programming books, and lots of magazines (including one which had
| the ad "We See Farther" ad:
| https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_11970... )
| and typed in lots of program listings for games and so forth, and
| used Scripsit for my senior term paper.
|
| Bought a 128K Mac and pretty much one of everything in the store,
| then switched to Windows 'cause I wanted a portable device, until
| the NCR-3125 and Go Corp.'s PenPoint came out --- paired that w/
| a NeXT Cube which got me through college and was pretty much the
| high-water mark of my graphical computing experience.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| At around age 12 took an after school class in programming BASIC
| on TRS-80 computers. My dad let me use his dial up account at the
| university where he worked. 300 baud with an acoustic coupler
| modem and an ADM 3a terminal (one of the first "work from home"
| setups; certainly none of my friends had anything like that at
| their houses). Found the colossal cave game and started digging
| in to how it was programmed.
|
| Later in early high school used paper route money to buy a
| TI-99/4a. Learned more BASIC and then assembly language on that.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| https://gavinhoward.com/2024/06/my-programming-journey/
| jessekv wrote:
| TI-83
|
| I still think these things (especially the TI-89) are really
| underrated. They have a battery life measured in months to years
| and can do calculus symbolically.
| hx8 wrote:
| I was eight years old, and wanted to make a Pokemon fan site, so
| I purchased a book to learn HTML, and used "view source" on every
| website I could find. I ended up copying and pasting some
| Javascript that I wouldn't be able to understand for another 6
| years.
|
| At fourteen I became interested in "serious" programming and
| bought a copy of Visual Studio along with a C++ book. I was
| mostly interested because I read online that C++ was challenging.
|
| At seventeen I took an interest in Linux, and started using that
| full time realizing I could have saved myself from spending
| literally all my money by using an open source C++ compiler.
|
| At 21 I finally found myself in a Computer Science undergraduate
| department.
|
| Somewhere along the way I started building PCs, but my interest
| was always more on the software side than the hardware side.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| That's hilarious, I also learned HTML by making something that
| could be called a Pikachu fan site.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| HeathKit Programmable Calculator, circa 1974 or so.
|
| Lots of messing around with things that go bang; Then, I attended
| a redneck tech school, where I learned Electronic Design, Machine
| Code and "microprocessors" (what they called CPUs, back then).
| That was around '82-'83.
|
| All the rest has been seminars, OJT, and just plain ol' messing
| around at home.
| corysama wrote:
| My grandfather saw that computers were going to be important. So,
| he got me a Commodore64. Inflation adjusted, that was probably a
| $600 gift for an 8 year old. I tried copying the code from the
| magazines. But, it didn't click until that same grandfather sent
| me to a summer camp that was mostly sports, but also had a class
| in LOGO (TurtleDraw). Thanks, Grandpa!
|
| In high school, the IT guy got bored and started a class teaching
| Pascal. The whole class timeshared a Linux 386 via amber Wyse
| terminals. He also had a follow-on class that taught C. But, his
| attitude was "If you made it through the first class and came
| back, you're cool. Here's a book on C and a compiler. Go make up
| your own assignments and I'll be busy teaching Pascal to the new
| kids over there." I've been programming C/C++ for over 25 years
| now. Thanks, IT Guy!
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Mom was a COBOL programmer. She saw the direction things were
| headed with computing. The family got an Apple //c for Christmas
| in 1984. In the spring, she enrolled me in a six week one night a
| week course for computer programming at the local high school. We
| learned BASIC on Apple ][ e.
|
| I took the knowledge and ran with it. Didn't take long to want
| more, found a game programming book using assembly - but since I
| didn't have an assembler, I entered machine code directly. That
| kept be engaged for years.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I also wrote my first program on an Apple IIe using Apple
| Basic. My high school bought two of them (one for math depth.
| One for the business dept.) around 1979 or 1980.
|
| I was one of the few students to have a class in both areas so
| I could take my code back and forth between classes on a floppy
| (8 inch I think)
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I know the //c had a built-in 5.25 inch drive. Keeping those
| things organized was ... challenging.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Asked for an Atari 2600 for Christmas, got a Commodore VIC-20
| instead. Learned BASIC. Got the Programmer's Reference Guide and
| learned "machine code", learning by assembling by hand, POKEing
| it into memory, and SYSing to run it.
|
| That book literally changed my life.
| karaterobot wrote:
| We bought a 386 SX, and I figured out how to change directories
| and run random programs. No documentation, no internet of course,
| just randomly typing in commands to see what happened. That led
| me to QBASIC, which led me to modifying GORILLAS.BAS. Then one
| day I was exploring a file called TELIX.EXE, and realized it had
| something to do with dialing phone numbers. I asked the guy at
| the counter of Radio Shack (!) what it could be, and he gave me
| vague instructions about what to do next. I plugged a phone cord
| into the back of the computer and started using BBSs, which led
| to MUDs, which led to scripting, drawing in ANSI graphics, and
| ultimately to programming and design, which have been my careers.
| smj-edison wrote:
| My start was a mix of Khan Academy and a laptop with a broken
| screen.
|
| My mom's computer screen broke when it got dropped on the ground,
| but it still had a working VGA port. So, she reached out to
| someone in our congregation who did sysadmin work who installed
| Ubuntu 12.04 on it. He also helped get a LAMP stack installed
| locally, and set up a server that I could deploy code to. It was
| funny since there was little 10 year old me lugging around a
| chunky monitor with this laptop everywhere I went.
|
| I was homeschooled, so I got an hour of computer time every day
| as long as I was doing something productive. The Khan Academy CS
| course had just been released, so my dad helped me get started,
| and I consumed those tutorials! I also got to check out other
| people's projects and tweak random numbers to see what happened.
| The KA community is incredible, since you can comment on others'
| programs and they're pretty responsive.
|
| Another fun thing was doing Minecraft modding (shout out to
| bedrock miners' tutorials!). To this day I'm shocked that my 12
| year old self was writing java code like that, but I suppose I
| was mainly just copying and pasting code, lol.
|
| There's so many little projects in various languages I did (tried
| and failed to make an android app, tried to make a couple JS
| games but was bad at finishing stuff, made SVN for Khan Academy,
| read some random books on clojure and elixir, started but never
| completed an inventory management system for my aunt). But, when
| I think back, Khan Academy on that old laptop really kicked it
| off.
| bitwize wrote:
| My father is a retired mechanical engineer. Back in the early
| 1980s he was working on some engine designs and found that the
| programmable calculators he was using just weren't up to the task
| of grinding out the mechanical advantage curves he was attempting
| to characterize. So first he got a Tandy Pocket Computer
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Pocket_Computer) and later a
| full-fat TRS-80 (the Model 16, the most expensive and powerful
| model they sold at the time, and part of the Model II line which
| was incompatible with the TRS-80s most people are familiar with:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_II), took a couple of
| college courses on programming, and wrote an engine simulator in
| BASIC replete with a graphical display that animated the position
| of the piston and crankshaft and plotted the curve on-screen.
|
| I mean, the man is a stone-cold genius. Anything he needed to
| know how to do, he would bro down and learn it, often in a very
| short time. Even though I didn't understand half of what he was
| trying to do back then, it was a wonder to young me, especially
| since it came about by merely feeding instructions into the
| machine.
|
| Eventually, for my fifth birthday, he went down to Crazy Eddie's
| and got me a Commodore VIC-20, so I would keep my grubby mitts
| off his expensive professional equipment. I then began writing my
| own BASIC programs, to make the PETSCII birds from the tutorial
| manual fly according to my own plan and so forth. The love of
| computing had been planted. And here I am. That five-year-old
| kid, awestruck by having an electronic genie I can type my wishes
| to and see them granted, is still in there somewhere. The grind
| of Scrum, meetings, deadlines, legacy code, and the looming
| spectre of "vibe coding" turning my work and passion into a
| triviality haven't snuffed the flame yet.
| stevekemp wrote:
| My parents moved home just before Christmas, and we had to spend
| a lot of money on short notice replacing windows, etc.
|
| As a result of low cash for the first time ever my parents bought
| my sisters and I a shared present - A Sinclair ZX Spectrum, 48k.
|
| The computer came with 10-12 casette-tapes, a tape recorder,
| bundle of manuals and a joystick. Unfortunately the tape-recorder
| didn't work so we couldn't load any of the games.
|
| I spent Christmas reading the BASIC manual, and my sisters spent
| it being disappointed.
|
| I wrote about this here, in the past in a little more detail:
|
| https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming
| sircastor wrote:
| A bit adjacent, but I've spent some free time the last couple of
| weeks tearing down and rebuilding a cuckoo clock. I've been
| delighted learning the mechanics of the bellows, the bird, and
| just clock movements in general.
|
| There's a great value to curiosity, and I think it's incredibly
| important that we nurture it in our society.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| The feeling of configuring my new shiny laptop is pretty similar
| to the feeling of learning to use my first logarithmic ruler. But
| it all started with my granny's abacus.
| rco8786 wrote:
| My family got a computer when I was in 3rd grade (1994-ish?) and
| I was immediately obsessed. A year or two went by of me just
| clicking every button I could find on the computer to see what
| happened, most of which was nothing. Eventually the idea of
| making my own programs hit me. I remember asking every adult I
| could how to "build programs". Nobody knew or at least nobody
| took me seriously. Eventually a family friend, who happened to be
| a Navy Admiral and at one point on the joint chiefs of staff,
| actually responded affirmatively. He showed me a small program he
| had written for his son that mimicked some air traffic and had
| callsigns on the airplanes like "Goose" and "Maverick". He sent
| me home with a copy of QBasic on a 3.5" floppy and a BASIC
| programming book. It was all downhill from there.
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