The guy sitting next to me thought he was talking to a girl on mIRC.
He was talking to me. I was eight.
This was Warpnet, a sală de net in Suceava, around 1999. We had computers connected to the world, nicknames to hide behind, and apparently neither the need nor the ability to check the next chair over.
Practically every conversation on Undernet started with asl pls. Age, sex, location, please. A tiny questionnaire, which I had decided to treat as creative writing.
The location part, at least, turned out to be extremely accurate.
When he realised who was typing back, his reaction amounted to: bro, what the fuck.
Fair enough. I think about that whenever I start taking my beginnings in computing too seriously.
A nickname gave you room. You could ask a stupid question, try on a different personality, say something you weren't ready to say with your full name attached. Sometimes you used that freedom to be an idiot. Exhibit A: me. But there was something valuable in getting to choose how much of yourself to bring into a conversation. Now it feels like corporations are gathering every little piece of your identity to finish a puzzle you never agreed to sit for. Your name, your face, the things you like, the people you know. I think we lost something there.
Romania had come out of communism in December 1989. About ten years later, there I was in Suceava, opening mIRC and joining conversations on an international network. Someone in another country could answer me. So could someone within elbow distance. The same little window handled both.
The size of that change makes more sense to me now. Back then, typing a line and seeing somebody answer was enough to hold my attention. My words had appeared on their screen. They'd read them, typed something, and now it was on mine. I could make that happen whenever I wanted. What else could I make happen?
That last question could eat an afternoon.
I learned Unix there, at Warpnet, through people I met in that room. They have my respect to this day. They knew things I wanted to understand, and they took the time to show me.
Someone showed me ls. Two letters, Enter, and the computer told me what was there. Then cd, and I could move somewhere else, run ls again, see what was inside. I was finding my way around a machine by typing little words at it. I wanted to keep going.
Then ssh. The keyboard under my hands could talk to another computer, somewhere else. I was still in the same chair at Warpnet, but the commands were running on that machine. Even listing files felt different once that sank in.
Learning how to run something with ./ in front of its filename felt like being let in on a secret. I typed it, pressed Enter, and something started. Eventually there was Eggdrop, psyBNC, more things to get running and mess around with.
It was so much fun. An afternoon could disappear into things I'd now do without thinking. A connection worked. A few filenames appeared. A script did what I'd asked it to. Each of those was worth turning to someone and saying, look at this.
There was a generous gap between what I could run and what I could explain. Being eight, I saw very little reason for that to affect my confidence.
I doubt the people teaching me thought they were helping decide what I'd spend my life doing. They were showing me computer stuff. I was having the time of my life. Somewhere in that exchange, a fairly permanent habit formed.
I still have trouble leaving a thing alone once I realise I don't understand it.
That can make me difficult. These days I sometimes get angry when people seem less curious than I am. We get something working, they're happy to stop, and I'm still wondering why it worked. I catch myself expecting them to want the next question as much as I do.
But people come to computing for different reasons. Some want to get the thing done and go home. Some do it for the money. Some use a computer because their job requires it, and would happily spend the day doing something else. All perfectly reasonable. My fascination doesn't create an obligation for anyone else to share it. I know that. Occasionally I need to remind my face.
You can probably see how I ended up making a personal website look like this. Give me a terminal, a blinking cursor, something I can poke at, and I settle in quite happily. Every so often, something works and I still get that little urge to turn to someone: look at this. There's a little of Warpnet in that feeling.
I couldn't tell you every command I learned there. I can still picture the guy next to me discovering who he'd been chatting with. I remember the people who took the time to explain things to an eight-year-old. And I recognise the kid who always had something else to try before leaving.
Steve Jobs called the computer “the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
For me, it's food for my soul.
Anyway, my back hurts. I'm going to lie down.
Stay fucking curious. The magic of computers will always be real.