The first game I programmed, using a kid-friendly BASIC book, had you pilot a spaceship (just a big square, surely; I was still in primary school) through a canyon. Your only goal was to avoid the walls.

Games have improved since then, a lot more than my programming skill. Still, I was online before the Internet (through such networks as FidoNet or LifNet, for the older geeks among you) and served for a time as Assistant Forum Manager for MSN France, for which I also designed webpages.

But even that was ten years ago, as I am writing these lines (in 2007). Between then and now, after having co-written/-edited/-translated a handful of computer books, I have only learned new software for my own geeky pleasure.