In junior high he found his math course much too easy and asked if he could be advanced to a higher level. Upon review of his state placement test scores, however, his request was denied. His counselors suggest that, since the new computer-programming course had a few openings, he might be interested in that. He took their suggestion and found that he was Indeed very interested. While the other students were busy learning "Hello World", he created a Craps simulator, complete with Teletype dice, his first program and epiphany.

While in high school, he honed his skills by creating a Trojan horse program to hack into the school district's mainframe computer. But embracing his own curiosity and exploring the school district records was a combination that was bound to lead to trouble. An instructors casual glance over the young hacker's shoulder led to banishment from all high school computer classes. Not wanting to give it up, he immediately applied to U.C. Irvine and was quickly accepted for afternoon and evening courses in computer science and math. Each day the sixteen year old Britvich made the 45-minute bike ride to and from the University. He worked odd jobs over the weekend to raise the money needed to pay for time on the University mainframe computer. During the week he programmed at night, stopping at home with just enough time to shower and eat before going back to high school in the morning.