[parksy]

I was doing BASIC on an Amstrad CPC at 5. Sure it was just simple GOTO 10 stuff (print hello, border 10, print alex, border 5, goto 10 etc...), but I also knew how to run games (how else would I play harrier attack?).

My mum in particular was very attentive to teaching me reading and writing and I did cursive from a young age, I got in trouble at age 7 because I wasn't doing the curriculum-endorsed print in class (the teacher picked me up by the hair and shook me), but yeah I was definitely doing basic computer stuff by 5 and definitely knew how to pick up a pencil.

I always say I started programming at 10 because it sounds more believable and that's when I was making simple text adventure games but yeah. Welcome to the mid 80s where having a CLI was the only way to compute at home, where parenting was a great deal more laissez flair but also more punitive (the whole debate about "smacking" was still in the future then).