[punk-coder]

My first exposure to computers was in elementary school. We had a couple Apple II computers which had Logo installed on them. We had fun typing in commands to draw Spirograph looking images on the screen.

My parents got me a Commodore 64 when it first came out. I had a tape deck to save stuff onto. When you turned on the machine you were at a BASIC prompt. It came with a manual that had some simple programs in it. One of the programs drew a piano keyboard on the screen and mapped keys to keyboard keys to let you play. I remember going through the code and changing values just to see what it did. That kind of got me started on programming.

We subscribed to a few magazines (Family Computing, BYTE, etc) that would have program listings in them, which I would sit down and type in. I would then go through the same process. What happens if I change this peek or poke command? What is GOSUB doing? What are all these numbers in the DATA section?

I got to the point where I could write my own programs, including a couple simple games using sprites and joystick controls.

I enjoyed it enough that I'm still a developer now at the age of 46 and plan on doing it for as long as I can.