I'm nerding out this weekend.
Back in the wild west of the Internet, I spent a lot of time on IRC talking to a small group of people about "trading software". Most people were into games, but I loved applications. I played with generating mountains and planets with Bryce. I tinkered with Visual Basic back when Microsoft charged an insane amount for their development tools.
I learned to reverse engineer shareware with Soft Ice and create a key generator. I even got my hands on OS/2 Warp and used that for a while. We "shared" copies of Windows, which also cost quite a bit, and various versions of Word Perfect (which never got better than version 5.1. As broke as I was in those days, I realize I probably could not have had my current career if I hadn't played with "shared" software.
Linux started becoming a thing then too. I wrestled with getting an Internet connection on Slackware for days. I fell in love with Debian when I discovered it. Then came Redhat, which you still got by buying a book with a CD in it.
Monthly magazines came with CDs full of shareware to explore (and reverse engineer). I spent a lot of time just using software for the sake of using the software. Novelty was addictive.
I'm still a sucker for a new text editor and cheerfully download stuff like Sublime Text or Zed just to see what's new. And, I absolutely love playing with browsers like Vivaldi, Arc, Orion, and Sigma OS. But, for the most part, I stick to a few basic applications.
Yesterday, I was looking at Marked and discovered that you can get it with a ton of other small apps for $10 a month through Setapp. That sent me down a rathole of playing with small MacOs applications. (Mac software used to be so much fun. Remember Delicious Library?
I installed so much stuff yesterday. I got new database tools, new REST testing applications, new note taking and task management programs, and all sorts of utilities like text expanders, snippet libraries, and macro creators. I will probably not really "use" 98 percent of what I've installed (or will install in the future), but man I am having fun playing with software again.