[seanmcdirmid]

I took my first programming class in 1983, after school while in the 2nd grade I guess (then reinforced by a BASIC/Pascal course in a Mississippi high school). Being just BASIC, I still had a leg up when I did C in college 10 or so years later.

Ironically, my second “better” Seattle-area high school had given up on programming as something to teach, I’m sure they’ve changed their tune now :).

[OldHand2018]

Sure, in the 1980s the schools I went to in small-town Indiana had plenty of Apple IIs (and the Acer clones) that anyone could use. Kids magazines in the public library would usually have BASIC source code in the back that you could type in to get a simple game or logic puzzle.

Like most educational institutions they used June fiscal years, so they would buy technology near the end of the fiscal year with leftover money. Those computers would sit unopened in their boxes until September, unless you offered to take it home for the summer. I'd guess that I had a brand-new IBM PC (that cost 25-30% of our family income) at least half of the summers. You were kind of doing the school a favor - they didn't need to worry about storing it somewhere and you did the work to set it up and make sure it worked. And if a kid wanted to learn over summer vacation, they certainly wanted to help facilitate if they could.

Despite all that, I can remember going to the state programming contests in Indianapolis in 5th, 6th, 7th grades and being blown away by how much better than me all the other kids were.