In the early 90's I used something called "books" to learn C/C++ using an old Borland
IDE running in DOS. All that came out of gaming, which changed to game development (okay--an attempt at it), and finally ended up turning into a software development career. Eventually I was sent an expensive paper with "Computer Science/Mathematics" on it to hang on the wall; after the 2000 IT bubble collapse, employers seemed to like that kind of thing for some reason.
Shortly after 2003 I switched over to
Java, and after some years experiencing the pain of web development, I decided to focus on Java backend coding, ultimately leading to desktop development using JavaFX. The latter being a topic I probably know too well after 20 years of Java, but oh well.
I also use a Penguin OS exclusively (usually Linux Mint), so it's probably best to not bring up those other OSes too much--you might get an unwanted lecture on how
you should switch to Linux. Or even worse, if I'm really triggered, you might experience a Linux meme. (You've been warned!)
The last thing I should address is the inevitable "What kind of gaming?" question. Back in that '90's time period I was lucky enough to encounter one of the first real strategy games, named "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". I wasn't incredibly interested in the arcadey/shooter games, at least not well enough to bother learning C, so I suppose RTK and games like that indirectly provided the motivation to learn development. I still mostly focus on strategy/simulation stuff today, especially when it's science or history related.
By now you're probably thinking: gaming + Java + Linux? Nobody does that! Where did this fool come from? I guess that's why I can usually be found roaming the sparsely populated JavaFX frontier here at the Ranch. But sometimes I'll visit the more populated areas to see if civilization still exists...