I'm of a generation where attention disorder seemingly didn't exist. At best it was called being hyperactive and parents were simply advised not to give their child too much chocolate or alot of sweets. Add a speech impedient that stayed with me until I was pre-teen and my informative years were anything but.
I could have done better in High School if I had applied myself. I loved English but little else. The other thing that did capture my attention was my first computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I played computer games to begin with, before winning a copy of The Computer Handbook by Usborne Publishing. It was that book which peaked my interest in coding, fuelling my first steps with programming in BASIC.
A year or so later and I was playing text adventure games. This lead me to The Quill, a system for writing text adventures. Whereas I never did finish writing the game in question, the system further fuelled my interest in coding.
A decade passed, along with a Commodore Amiga, and I finally owned my first PC, an Intel Pentium III with a RIVA TNT graphics card by Nvidia. A game I was playing, Starsiege Tribes, gave me my first insight into Internet Relay Chat. After creating a channel for my Clan, I developed my first IRC bot to greet members.
Throughout all this, my lack of attention continued to be an issue. Reams of printed paper were testament to projects started but never finished. I never did keep those copies either, much to my regret later in life.
Whereas I aim to continue this story in the future, bringing it more up-to-date with talk of Python and Web Development, writing this has made me wonder just how many of us that code are autistic in some way, shape, or form?
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