I can't believe how very much I can relate to the first 5 paragraphs of this post. It hits home at very core of what (unknowingly at the time) formed the basis

I can't believe how very much I can relate to the first 5 paragraphs of this post. It hits home at very core of what (unknowingly at the time) formed the basis of my career. I started on the VIC-20 (for which I traded in my old, but working Fairchild Channel F, Doh!) and then moved up to a C-64. One of the first games I had came on cassette tape, was written in basic and at a certain point... you'd hit a syntax error... fixing that bug was my introduction into programming in early Junior High School. And to the point of those opening paragraphs, I remember the Programmer's Reference Guide for the C64 included schematics for the computer. The limited nature of the BASICs that came in ROM also very much forced me to learn fundamentals of computing that I appreciate to this day. If you wanted to draw circle on the screen you had to perform bitwise operations with the screen memory using "PEEK" and "POKE"; there were no fancy "CIRCLE" or "DRAW" commands. At the time, my friends had computers that could do those things, but the extra effort with my computer had pedagogical value that continues to pay dividends today.