[AnimalMuppet]

My dad was a programmer at Sperry Univac. Our scratch paper was 11 x 14 fanfold. He also brought home punched cards. I learned to read the holes (though not for punctuation characters). He had this laminated card with a list of assembly opcodes, what they did, and their time of execution. (I still remember that an add took 4 microseconds, and a multiply took 6).

Then our high school got TRS-80s in the computer lab. I borrowed the BASIC manual and read it while I was supposed to be paying attention in calculus. (It only took an hour. That's something to keep in mind when designing a language for kids to learn.) I already knew FORTRAN, but changing a FORTRAN program took a week (create a deck of cards, hand it off to a teacher, they took it off-site and ran it, and brought back the results). Whereas BASIC I could change in a minute. (Yeah, those who say that a REPL is a big deal? Instant feedback really does change things.)