It’s official. I’m old. I just gave art advice to someone who was born the same year I started using Illustrator as my main medium. I have a pencil case that’s older than this kid that I still use.
(For the record? I got a CD full of pirated copies of Photoshop, AI, and Painter from a friend, then grabbed ‘Real World Illustrator 8’ and started fiddling around. I also told this kid to not focus exclusively on learning Illustrator, but also to spend time sitting around with pencil and paper drawing stuff.)