My early software and skills life happened around some late stages of BBS and IRC, and yes, #warez.

I met some absolutely wonderful people from online, and even got to spend some quality time with some very high end hardware that couldn't be gifted, but was effectively almost unlimited, and people with appropriate skills and compassion to match. My early career and schooling made no use of those skills, but once I found my jam a little later on that knowledge still proved to be incredibly important and put me leaps and bounds ahead of my peers, and it's been an amazing ride ever since.