I started development on Texas Instrument calculators. On most of those, you could only have one letter variables in its TI-BASIC programming. I lucked out and

I started development on Texas Instrument calculators. On most of those, you could only have one letter variables in its TI-BASIC programming. I lucked out and convinced my parents to spring a little extra for the TI-85, and it had a lot of extra goodies, including named variables. I credit a lot of my initial understanding of how programming works to making various text-based games on those calculators while only half paying attention to class in high school.