MUDs are why I am a programmer today. I had tried some programming in BASIC and I just didn't know what to write, or the things I did write seemed trivial and pointless.
I was trying to become a max level on Medievia at about the same time, and the grinding (killing 1000 bunnies) was getting very boring. When I found out my ZMUD client offered some basic scripting and trigger capabilities, I set out to create my first leveling bot. It was blood sweat and tears, lots of learning through trial and error, and the bot would still do dumb things and crash half the time, but the spark had been ignited.
My first encounter with Forth was through the TinyMUCK codebase, the language was called MUF, and it blew my mind at the time that it was possible to code within the MUD game itself and use it right away.
Wow, memories! MUF taught me stack architecture. I remember printing out reams of its documentation (diagrams in ASCII art, IIRC) on paper and reading through it for fun, just trying to wrap my head around how this crazy thing was supposed to work.
Same here, was a mid-90s Health Science major spending way too much time playing an LPMud. Started to learn how to build my own areas, got hooked, and switched to Computer Science the following fall.
I was trying to become a max level on Medievia at about the same time, and the grinding (killing 1000 bunnies) was getting very boring. When I found out my ZMUD client offered some basic scripting and trigger capabilities, I set out to create my first leveling bot. It was blood sweat and tears, lots of learning through trial and error, and the bot would still do dumb things and crash half the time, but the spark had been ignited.
I never looked back.