[Dredd]

Short Introduction

So as some of you know my real name is Jake, I'm 21 and reside in the United Kingdom. My main interests are programming and cars, I currently work as a programmer for a small company which HF helped me get. I originally joined HF back in 2013 after a friend recommended it to me, I'm coming up to 5 years on the site in a 2/3 months and what a great 5 years it's been!

My Journey

So let's start at the beginning of my journey way back in February 2013, I was around 16 at this time was big into gaming and especially cheating in games. I had been a member of TTG and Se7ensins for a number of years and was well known on both of them for my USB cheats on CoD WaW. My friend who was a member of HF had also helped me develop some of the cheats and a few times had mentioned HF to me. I remember visiting it one time saw threads about creating RATs and other malware and immediately presumed the site was some sketchy illegal site. 

A few months following my first visit to HF I had started to get into VB .Net and needed a better platform to learn and show my creations. This is when I had remembered seeing the Coding section on HF and decided to sign up. Also around the same time I was getting into HTML, CSS and other web based programming languages, this plays a huge role in my professional career which I'll explain later. But as my knowledge grew in VB .Net people started to recognize the things I did and I started receiving Rep and feedback on my creations. It's a shame many of my old threads no longer exist I'm not to sure if they got purged or something but my first major project was an Omegle AI bot. It was way smarter and better than anything on the market at the time and people noticed this. Within a couple of months of being on the site I hit around 50 rep.

Rep/Feedback definitely helped me grow on the site, at the beginning it was something to work towards. A goal you could even call it, I'm not saying everything I did was spurred on by Rep but it made me want to create great things for the community and get noticed for them, I guess in a way it's virtual fame. As I flourished on the site my love for the site flourished too, it was around roughly a few months after this I invested and purchased L33T. And from there at around Christmas that year I applied and purchased Ub3r.

The following year I started to sell some things I had programmed on the marketplace, I never believed that anyone would pay for something that I had programmed. The idea of this kinda blew my mind to be honest, I guess I had no faith in my own ability. My friend was the one who convinced me that what I had created was amazing and people would pay for it. Within the first week of putting my product up for sale I had made over $400 from sales. I then used a lot of this money to purchase more awards and Ep1c.

After my VB .Net ventures calmed down a bit I started to get more into web development. Again I used a lot of the guides from the web masters section and tutorials around the forum to help me with this. I kept at web development for a couple of years and realized it was something I was fairly good at. After I finished school I started looking for Apprenticeships, I found one at a small company locally to me. When I went to the interviews they would always ask me to bring a professional portfolio of my work, since I had no professional experience the only things I had to show were the works I had created during my time on HF. Some of the work was websites and web apps I had developed for people on the forum, the one company I'm at now saw a lot of my work and found it impressive which in turn got me the job. So for that I have a huge thanks to the members of HF and Omni for creating such an amazing forum, without that part of my life I wouldn't be in the job I'm in now which I love.

Moving forward about a year my activity died out for a while as I was busy with other things. But my activity picked up again in 2016 and during this time I bought two sectors in groups, one in Nightmare and the other in Illuminati. I also led Illuminati for a while with Bandors which was a great experience even though I did get stick for it when it went tits up.

To this day I still dabble with web developer stuff in my spare time and a bit of .Net but I'm not as passionate as I was when I was younger. I think that's partly to do with me now working in the field, you don't want to be programming all day and then come home and program more. My activity has been a bit ropy recently on the forum, but within the last 2 weeks I've got into the swing of things again and am now striving for the 24K award!

Conclusion

In conclusion I've had a great 5 years on HF and look forward to enjoying another 5. HF has helped develop my skills not only as a person but professionally and even played a major part in getting me my current job. Thinking back I would be lost now without HF, I've met so many great people and have made new friends that I hope to keep in contact with for years to come. Thank you Omniscient for the brilliant website and a massive thank you to all the members who make this site a great place to come and visit.