Started screwing around with a limited version of Visual Basic 6 when I was 8 or 9. I had always liked the visual design of computer programs, so the programmin

Started screwing around with a limited version of Visual Basic 6 when I was 8 or 9. I had always liked the visual design of computer programs, so the programming was sort of a means to an end to make cool GUIs. This limited Visual Basic had most of the features of the professional edition, except you couldn't distribute compiled programs (only run them in the editor), and they took out all the help files for some reason. I got pretty used to having to forage on my own to find decent documentation for anything, relying on computer manuals from local libraries and tutorials from random sites to fill in the blanks. I'm not really sure why I had the patience to put up with that, to be honest. I think I just assumed everyone learned programming like that. I pretty much never met another person who knew anything about computer programming face-to-face until I went to college. When I got tired of not being able to compile anything, I ended up experimenting with Visual Basic.net in a beta of Visual Studio 2005 a relative gave me, had a bad experience with that, and started looking for alternatives. Eventually, I basically settled on Python. I still think Visual Basic 6 is one of the best programming environments ever made. It started in seconds, the GUI designer just worked, and the autocomplete was perfect. It even opened up with a blank project you could start screwing around with without even saving anything, encouraging a lot of experimentation with the widgets and language. It was QBasic for a different generation. :(