I don't have many memories of my early childhood, when I was about 10 (I think) I began playing minecraft 1.5.2 and watching youtube videos about minecraft. The oldest videos I recall are the ones of "EternalLove" and another guy playing on xbox which I cannot remember the name. My first world was in creative mode, I was in an island and I was slowly learning what blocks were available and how they worked in the game. I later started a survival world which I would continue for many years, by base was in a swamp biome.

After a family trip in norther Italy I remember I was curious about "how do people make computer programs", so I asked my dad, which is not an expert, but he hinted that they were made with programming languages like C++. When I came back home I started looking what was this "c++". I downloaded dev-c++ and began writing classic programs like text based games with decision trees. I still have many of those.

#include<cstdlib>
#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>

//Programma aventura

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{//Inizio
  int scelta;

  system("cls");
  cout<<"Matteo deve fare la spesa in brevissimo tempo e non sa se arrivera'in orario."<<endl;
  cout<<"Davanti a lui ci sono due strade: una piu'lunga, ma piu'sicura e l'altra piu'corta in cui Matteo non ci era mai passato"<<endl;
  cout<<"Matteo deve prendere:"<<endl;
  cout<<"1.La strada sicura"<<endl;
  cout<<"2.La strada piu'corta"<<endl;

  cout<<"Scelta: ";//1 2
  cin>>scelta;
  cout<<endl;

  switch(scelta);
  {
    {//Inizio caso 1
      case 1:

        int scelta2;

        cout<<"Matteo passa per la strada sicura, ma dei lavori bloccano la strada."<<endl;
        cout<<"Matteo deve:"<<endl;
        cout<<"3.Tornare indietro e fare la strada piu'corta"<<endl;
        cout<<"4.Cercare di superare i lavori"<<endl;

        cout<<"Scelta: ";//3 4
        cin>>scelta2;
        cout<<endl;

        switch(scelta2);

        ...

When I was about 13 I began watching youtube videos on how to make videogames with Unity engine and I made my own little horror games. I remember spending most of my wake time watching these videos, programmingin C# and playing either minecraft of The Sims 1.

During the same time I wanted to make youtube videos myself so I started a gaming channel where I would play minecraft and other games. This was a crazy yourney: I learned so many thing like advanced redstone, video editing and recording, creating miniatures with photoshop and so many other things. I was really invested in my minecraft world and I remember this period as an happy one because I had always so many redstone projects in mind and I was working on something that made me proud. However, even good things come to an end and by 2019 my perfectionism was making me anxious and depressed because everything had to be perfect and I could not allow myself any errors. I decided to quit the channel out of frustration and play other games like Dark Souls 1 and Skyrim.

I attended the Liceo Scientifico "Enrico Medi" where I participated in programming Olympiads and cybersecurity competitions. I was doing good in the competitions, reaching nationals every time and this made me choose the path ahead: I wanted to be a computer scientist. In particular, I participated in the cyberchallenge which is an university CTF competition and I arrived first place (even if I was still in high school) and competed in the nationals. During this time, I met probably the greatest programmer I know, Leonardo Taccari, which is part of the board of NetBSD and a true UNIX fellow. I asked him suggestions about books to learn UNIX and he suggested me "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment", a book that I bought and read all the way in the following months. Later this book would influence me to dig deeper in operating systems and UNIX kernels and stay close to the operating systems world.

Yet, I was a very shy and introverted person, and I lacked any type of social skills. I was very isolated and I would never leave my room other than for going to school to feel even more isolated. This was really hard mentally, I needed to to something to help my mental sanity. On my last year of high school I began pushing myself out of my comfort zone and participating in some activities like theater courses. This was the bravest decision of my life and It would change the course of it. Slowly I started getting used to going outside of my room and being surrounded by other people, something I was greatly struggling (and still do sometimes). I also met F which helped me a lot with my self confidence and isolation.

I finished high school with the highest marks and continued my studies in Computer Science in Trento.

To be continued…

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