I don't think I was ever happier as a programmer than I was in the early 90s, well before university, with no thought of the internet, writing games on my Amiga.

Incidentally, I recently replayed Loom, from a bit before that era. It's still a lovely, wonderful game! Such a shame the fan-made sequel (Forge) seems to have died.

Same, but it was late 90's and I had found a Quick Basic compiler on our Windows 95 laptop. It had the ability to compile EXEs and I felt like I'd discovered some old magics. Like, this thing was just sitting here? All I had to do was double click qb45.exe?? And it opened a fully integrated terminal IDE???

The built in syntax help, which was incredible, and some example programs (no idea why our laptop had these) let me self-teach.

Now I sit all day and write bare metal firmware, but it feels so empty.

I had two faster (Pentium 3) machines but firing up my dad's old Pentium 90 running redhat that I installed to use KDE to write C was just a beautiful feeling and really got me coding for a few years.

Even games were at least partially open (quake) or easily moddable (command and conquer, tribes, etc.) so I went down that rabbit hole soon after.

Also man I really miss BeOS.

Loom is the best looking EGA game ever made. Sadly the VGA remake was hit-and-miss with the visuals.

Impossible to think about Loom without thinking about the first room in Money Island and the guy with the badge