@KitRedgrave I was hacking a bit in middle school even lol.
That was when I graduated from LOGO and BASIC to Z80 assembly. Resources were quite constrained and making games go fast and smooth required programming in a "hackish" way. Basically they were real time embedded systems.
Also I didn't learn from experts/teachers, I read books and later BBS forums so I probably make some horrible code, though I can now make an Arduino do lots of stuff LOL