For me, around age 12 when I started using BBS's in ~1993:
1) I exclusively used it to play door games, mostly LORD, Exitilus, Usurper, and Trade wars 2002. Logged in daily if my parents allowed me. I no longer remember the name of the program I used, just that it was in DOS and I was connecting using... I think it was a 2400 baud modem iirc
2) my oldest brother (15 at the time) was informed about it by one of his friends, and I was the annoying tagalong younger brother who had to join along.
3) My experience was that we logged into a very local BBS, run on 3 lines by some guy who lived in the same city as us. I don't know how many people used the BBS as a whole, but I recall there being a couple hundred Legend of the Red Dragon players.
4) LORD had a bulletin board chat, and it was mostly people bragging or trolling each other. So not too different from gaming chats today, though perhaps a little more tame back then.
5) In the door games, no one talked much about things outside of the game unfortunately. I wish I had thought to check the other features of the BBS when I was of the age when they were still around.
Yes, but the situation was much different than the one you have found yourself in.
As an "intern" I found myself at a very small company - literally just my boss, his son, and me. I was the only programmer. I loved the autonomy that came with being the only one who knew how to write code, and they were in desperate need of it. There was a lot to do, and they had a dream I believed in. I worked there - sometimes I even slept there I worked so late - for five years. They ended up giving me a salary of 48k per year (in 2006) and no healthcare or benefits. I worked every weekday and most weekends, lost contact with friends and family, and ate terribly because I wouldn't even take time to try and make healthy food. Spent those five years cramming shitty fast food down my throat every day.
There are several warning signs that are hopefully plain as day to people reading that.
1) an "internship" should be tightly directed learning under a mentor. If you are the only software engineer at your "internship" what they are really looking for is free labor.
2) No software engineering job should pay 48k in America.
3) No full time job should go without health insurance.
4) Under no circumstances should a person work 60-80 hour weeks, but particularly under that horrible pay and no benefits.
I stayed because I felt a misguided sense of loyalty to them, and because their desperation to make their small business work meant that I got a huge and diverse array of systems that I got to build, and I got full autonomy to build them. There was something deeply addicting about that: addicting enough that I didn't even think about how my finances were crumbling and I hadn't seen a doctor in half a decade.
I finally woke up from my addiction when I started encountering health problems and couldn't see a doctor.
After a lot of soul searching, I left - and instantly upon finding a new job realized just how badly they had abused my naivete and sense of loyalty. I make many multiples of that income now, but I will never regain the lost health, lost friendships, and years of earning potential.
My advice to people is that, no matter how fun the work involved in the job ITSELF is, you need to still take an honest assessment on a regular basis about whether it is worth it. Even a very fun and fulfilling job can be killing you, or underpaying you, or distancing you from your family and from other opportunities.
In your situation, you are earning a reasonable wage and it sounds like you are not being stretched thin by it. Feel free to look around, but I don't see your situation as dire or necessarily in need of change.
I don't think people can realize how bad the "inglorious" side of software engineering can be. That isn't to say don't look and see if you can find better, but recognize that you are already in a great situation. And also one where you can either comfortably look for a new job or do your own side projects to learn and grow in ways your job might not be providing.
Hard Work +
Market Analysis +
(Massive Luck OR Large upfront funding OR Large and relevant network of personal connections) +
Luck IRT externalities that can impact your business
I wasted my 20's because I didn't understand the formula above. I worked for a small startup and I thought the idea was great. I worked 80 hours a week and churned out massive improvements to the product as they pivoted over and over trying to find a foothold in the market. But now I realize that the failure was because of both a lack of market analysis and a failure in that third term: we had neither luck nor upfront funding nor a network of REAL connections that could make things happen for us. It was a recipe for disaster: for wasted effort and a wasted era of my life before I woke up and realized how unlikely it was that we would turn the ship around.
The unfortunate part is that the third factor - the Luck or funding or connections factor - is mostly only influenceable by how successful you already were before you started the venture. It is the "success begets more success" factor that is unpopular to talk about among people who want to believe that their success came exclusively from the sweat of their brow.
I feel like a large number of software engineer positions interview as if they are looking for computer scientists.
The distinction is subtle, but important in terms of what is needed for the role.
Most software engineers are going to be asked to solve problems and actively avoid recreating algorithms and libraries from scratch while doing so: it represents added time, risk of bugs, and complexity to do so for minimal gain in many cases.
For most software jobs, the more important role when it comes to algorithms is in choosing which algorithm is most relevant to a task, not implementing it from scratch. To do so is often wasting your companies' time.
It's unpopular, but most software engineering (including most of my own career) is closer to a plumber than a scientist. And you know what? We provide a lot of value as plumbers, as unsexy as it sounds.
It's for these reasons that I think leetcode is an unsuitable test for most software engineering positions.
Yes! I came in here to recommend that one as well. He does an excellent job of not only talking about the mechanics of the language, but also the system components to which the mechanics directly relate: and he does so in a way that is both easy to understand and thorough. Such a good book.
1) I exclusively used it to play door games, mostly LORD, Exitilus, Usurper, and Trade wars 2002. Logged in daily if my parents allowed me. I no longer remember the name of the program I used, just that it was in DOS and I was connecting using... I think it was a 2400 baud modem iirc
2) my oldest brother (15 at the time) was informed about it by one of his friends, and I was the annoying tagalong younger brother who had to join along.
3) My experience was that we logged into a very local BBS, run on 3 lines by some guy who lived in the same city as us. I don't know how many people used the BBS as a whole, but I recall there being a couple hundred Legend of the Red Dragon players.
4) LORD had a bulletin board chat, and it was mostly people bragging or trolling each other. So not too different from gaming chats today, though perhaps a little more tame back then.
5) In the door games, no one talked much about things outside of the game unfortunately. I wish I had thought to check the other features of the BBS when I was of the age when they were still around.