[stevekemp]

I think it depends upon the relative age of the people you're talking to.

I started playing with a ZX Spectrum back in the early eighties, as a youngster, and directly credit it with my IT-career.

I only wish I'd tried writing computer games at the time, instead of hacking existing ones for infinite lives!

[smartscience]

Did you have a Multiface? Not all that cheap, but probably ended up teaching me more about low-level programming than anything else, short of writing a Spectrum 128 emulator for Risc OS :)

[stevekemp]

Sadly not, that would have made things a hell of a lot easier!