Preface
It was 1998, I was twelve, and my parents had just bought the family our first modern PC. It wasn’t long before I had figured out how to change the code for one of my favorite first-person shooter games—little things like making the rocket launcher fire a hundred rockets a second instead of one, then having it fire a hundred rockets in every direction … and promptly crashing the game. I was hooked, and I’ve been programming ever since.
The game was multiplayer. Other people had also discovered how to change the code, and the arms race quickly escalated. Someone would fire a hundred rockets at me. I’d have a script ready that would instantly build a wall right in front of me to block them all.
My opponent would spawn a dozen land mines ...
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