Within a few months, I was coding in Visual Basics and eventually wrote my own AIM client. Rather than using AIM, I was leveraging tocsoc.ocx, a little “module” or “dependency” used within my application in Visual Basics, to interact with AIM servers. There’s not much on the Internet nowadays about it, other than this, but we were developing all kinds of AIM tools, cloners, etc. using it. It’s similar to importing a module or gem within your python or ruby script nowadays.

After some parts of AIM’s servers started being discontinued and tocsoc.ocx became useless, I started developing websites using just basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I learned by just simply practicing and leveraging Adobe’s Dreamweaver to create code and instantly preview the way it looked. Didn’t really get too far with this other than making some very basic sites, but it was a bit interesting for some time. Didn’t really care for web development, but always thought it was cool to know how to do.