[drweevil]

Same. I was in the Army. We started seeing CP/M computers with 8" floppies, Wang word processors, etc. So I bought an Atari 800 and cassette data recorder from the PX to start learning. No Internet then; so magazines like Byte, Antic, & Analog were crucial for getting the gist of things. For hacking I started with Atari Basic, then moved on to OSS MAC/65 & OSS Action!. It was a lot of fun. So, you do need to read some, to get the lay of the land; but you also need to do.