[tomjohnson3]

I would be willing to bet that assembly wasn’t the first language you learned.

The first programming I did was as a kid when I taught myself basic on an apple II+ after I saw a joystick and a manual sitting next to my dad’s computer. ...it looked a bit like my Atari console and I was curious. (I too eventually wrote assembly - you had to in those days - but it wasn’t the introduction to programming for anyone I knew.)

This led to other things, including the robotics company I started, where we are, as I write this, running JS on an esp32 (among other things), hoping to inspire someone else to discover programming as I did - through play and fun.

To me, JS is kinda like basic was when I was a kid. ...the first step on a path that could surely include assembly, ML, distributed systems, robotics, computer vision, etc.

But what should step 1 be for kids today? I have a 6 year old, and all I know is she’s growing up in a different world than I did. ;-)

[FpUser]

The first language I learned was machine code. Just saying. And I was in no way programmer. I was just a scientist trying to get some digestible data from the device used in my experiments. As the time went by I got Assembly, C, Turbo Pascal etc. I knew about basic but have never used it.

[cambalache]

I first started programming when I taught myself at 3 years old digital logic. I started with just combinatorial logic (I was 3 after all!) but in one week I graduated to sequential logic.I still remember the spark of pride on father's eyes when I showed him the ALU I just created, he still told me to do better. Several ISA and micro-architecture later and half a dozen of languages created ( I remember fondly Beethoven,it was OO, this was before Simula) I started to get good at it. But then Gerda, my dear _Lehrerin_ had to go back to Germany (something about her father) and I had to start first grade so I set those juvenile games aside. I think they still somehow shaped the gentleman I am today.

Yours fondly. Oneupyou McGill