That’s just such a wonderful story. It really makes you feel nostalgic. I got into programming a generation later (so I missed the Klondike Gold Rush and wasn’t on the front lines of the browser wars either), but with getting into coding it was pretty much the same. My first steps we're with more or less simple 2D games as well (the least of them we're actually enjoyable from today's perspective).

Every little feature in my games, no matter how small, felt like a revelation. Each mistake and new mechanic opened new worlds for me (even small things like inventing strategies to key out transparent backgrounds, automatic collision detection, etc). All of that drove my attention to how stuff works under the hood. My first encounter was with BlitzBasic, though, not the GameMaker.

I guess that creative feeling during those first attempts triggered my live long passion for programming. I've been coding for ~ 20 years now, but it all started with a crappy 2D game on my weak PC.