AOL gave me my love of programming. I learned how to program in Visual Basic because I wanted to write my own "aol prog". I can still remember the "server" in the Warez room listed VB3.0 as the "the software that is used to make progs". Luckily there were people sharing their code so I could study and figure out how to do it myself.
Me and my cousin created a yo momma joke spammer. I was a shit head back then, but it paid off being a nerd. But still, I did not learn about linux and free software until many years later because of AOL's shitty walled garden.