I was maybe 12 or 13 in the late 80s, born and living in a tiny town in central Italy (Assisi), in love with technology and programming, also thanks to an older brother and his Commodore64.
One of his friend, ~10 years older than me, was studying CS in Pisa (one of the best CS universities in Europe, at least back then), but was frequently back home, and I used to visit him and play some videogames with him on his 386 or 486.
At some point he introduced me to Core War. I was instantly hooked, and we started writing "viruses" (that's how we called the programs) and then run tournament to see which one would perform best. I loved programming these things, and the intellectual challenge associated with it.
I am forever thankful to the creators of Core War. I ended up studying CS, moving abroad to work at AWS as a Technology Evangelist (first employee in Europe, back in 2008), and eventually having a rather successful career in IT. Core War deserves part of the gratefulness for all I had in life. BTW, this is the story of how I found my job at Amazon [0].
I was maybe 12 or 13 in the late 80s, born and living in a tiny town in central Italy (Assisi), in love with technology and programming, also thanks to an older brother and his Commodore64.
One of his friend, ~10 years older than me, was studying CS in Pisa (one of the best CS universities in Europe, at least back then), but was frequently back home, and I used to visit him and play some videogames with him on his 386 or 486.
At some point he introduced me to Core War. I was instantly hooked, and we started writing "viruses" (that's how we called the programs) and then run tournament to see which one would perform best. I loved programming these things, and the intellectual challenge associated with it.
I am forever thankful to the creators of Core War. I ended up studying CS, moving abroad to work at AWS as a Technology Evangelist (first employee in Europe, back in 2008), and eventually having a rather successful career in IT. Core War deserves part of the gratefulness for all I had in life. BTW, this is the story of how I found my job at Amazon [0].
[0]: https://simon.medium.com/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-...