I wanted to program computers before I had access to one. I would take books out of the library and write programs in the pseudo language they presented. In 198

I wanted to program computers before I had access to one. I would take books out of the library and write programs in the pseudo language they presented. In 1982 my Dad brought home a Sirius microcomputer for his work. That had BASIC, so I started writing programs in that. Also in 1982 I took my life savings ($300 @ age 13) and purchased a VIC20. That was a fun machine to learn with and also provided an introduction to the possibilities of assembly language. A few years later I built the TEC1 (http://holden.customer.netspace.net.au/tec1.html http://holden.customer.netspace.net.au/tec1.html) computer. That was Z80 based and had to be programmed in hexadecimal. That was very educational because it was learning at the hardware/software boundary. Since then there has been a steady progression through HLLs (Pascal, C, C++, Forth, Perl, Python, etc.) and assembly language for whatever CPU I have needed it for. Probably 90% of what I know about computers has been as a result of self-study based on personal interest. Even though I work in SW I've had very little formal training in CS (I'm an EE).