[hooksfordays]

My first experience with programming was my 7th grade teacher, a woman who inspired me so thoroughly, I still try to make regular visits to see her when I'm in town (10 years later). She had my class use Adobe Flash to create animations for some of our projects, and for presentations, if we were so inclined. Doing so required a knowledge of ActionScript to start and stop the animation, and that was the first I had ever heard of programming.

From there, she pointed me towards a camp offered by our school to improve my animating skills, but the senior student leading the program happened to be quite efficient at ActionScript. Most of the other students in the camp were beginners, so while they learned to animate, I learned more extensive ActionScript, and that had me hooked.