[zeta0134]

The motivation is key here, and I could not possibly agree more.

Lots of people tried to get me interested in Programming when I was younger. I was given a very dry book on PASCAL, and had Visual Basic installed on my very first computer. Never did a darn thing with either of them, because I was more interested in games.

In the 7th grade though, I was given a TI-82 graphing calculator, with a built-in programming language (BASIC) and the ability to type in programs from the math book and let them run. On its own this was neat, but I barely understood what I was doing. Then I got curious one day, read the instruction manual, and arrived at the getkey function.

The TI-82 instruction manual has little to say about the getkey function, except that it "can be used to create Video Games." There is no more dangerous thing to tell a young student bored with Algebra homework. I had a working PONG clone later that same week.