> It's _really_ painful to remember how scarce information was in the early 90s
I think that scarcity of information has helped me quite a lot. I often see others giving up on problems where they lack sufficient information, but I have an ingrained ability to sniff out the information - whether it's reverse engineering, gleaning subtle hints from what is available in the documentation I do have or just "thinking like the computer" to intuit things, I can very often make headway where others have failed.
I think that scarcity of information has helped me quite a lot. I often see others giving up on problems where they lack sufficient information, but I have an ingrained ability to sniff out the information - whether it's reverse engineering, gleaning subtle hints from what is available in the documentation I do have or just "thinking like the computer" to intuit things, I can very often make headway where others have failed.