Same here regarding emulation. When I was about 16, I took over project management for the UOX3 emulator for a year or so when the original author abandoned it. I sure as hell wasn't a good enough coder to have written it myself, but I knew just enough to be dangerous. I made bug fixes and added minor new features (the one I remember best was implementing the "page a GM" queue). And most importantly, got other much smarter--and older--people involved contributing impressive pieces of code. Who for some reason didn't have any problem working on a project being managed by a teenager :)
Ironically, now that I've gone down the sysadmin path as an adult, there's no way I still have the C++ chops to even read the code I wrote back then. Let alone recreate it. Kind of hilarious that some of the best code I ever wrote dates from high school.
One of my most vivid memories of that period was spinning up a new build, posting it to the website, and then leaving for school. When I got home, I had a number of emails saying "hey moron the new build instantly crashes on startup". Sure enough, it did. That was an excellent early lesson in the importance of testing!
(btw, I went by the incredibly terrible handle of "Anthracks" in those days, if that rings a bell for anyone. Still turns up a small number of hits!)
Ironically, now that I've gone down the sysadmin path as an adult, there's no way I still have the C++ chops to even read the code I wrote back then. Let alone recreate it. Kind of hilarious that some of the best code I ever wrote dates from high school.
One of my most vivid memories of that period was spinning up a new build, posting it to the website, and then leaving for school. When I got home, I had a number of emails saying "hey moron the new build instantly crashes on startup". Sure enough, it did. That was an excellent early lesson in the importance of testing!
(btw, I went by the incredibly terrible handle of "Anthracks" in those days, if that rings a bell for anyone. Still turns up a small number of hits!)