2016 — Hello, World.

This was the year I wrote my very first line of code.

Well... technically, it wasn't even a programming language. It was HTML.

I still remember opening a simple text editor, typing a bunch of weird-looking tags I barely understood, saving the file, and opening it in my browser. The result?

Hello Rizky.
Hello World.

I genuinely couldn't believe that a few lines of text could turn into an actual webpage.

But honestly? My first reaction wasn't amazement.

It was more like... "That's it?"

I'd spent several minutes typing all those strange tags just to end up with two short sentences on a screen. Not exactly the most exciting payoff. So yeah, I didn't continue learning programming seriously after that. I was just curious about how websites worked, got my answer, and moved on.

Outside of coding, I was — let's be real — kind of a chaotic kid.

I loved messing with my laptop. Downloaded random games, installed all kinds of software, grabbed cracked programs from sites like Bagas31 without thinking twice about the risks. Looking back, that was probably a terrible idea. Somehow though, I never once got hit with malware or ransomware.

Pure luck? Maybe.

Or maybe I'd already started developing some instinct for being careful without realizing it.

Most afternoons I was still planted in front of my laptop. Sometimes grinding games for hours with my friends. Other times, my mom, my younger sibling, and I would watch movies together — usually horror ones, because for some reason we were all into getting scared.

Life was simple. Tech wasn't my career yet. It was just the thing that made every day a little more interesting.

By the end of that year, elementary school was officially done. Junior high was next.

I didn't know it at the time, but every random click, every experiment, every cracked software download, and every "Hello, World." was quietly laying the groundwork for everything that came after.