I also got into programming through this scene, though a little later (irc.rizon.net #rsbotjava around 2008). I had already been doing a little coding but couldn't come up with decent project ideas (other than games, which always stalled out because I didn't know any artists or how to collaborate online). The RS scene was a perfect combination of interesting programming challenges, a decent size community of mostly other teenagers to hang out with, and getting to see my programs working in a "real" (virtual, ha) world. I learned about JVM internals, compiler techniques, IDEs, GUI programming with Swing, version control...... I don't know if I would have chosen CS as my major and gone into programming professionally if it weren't for this game and the community around it.
