My father bought us a TI-99/4A in 1981. The manual was quite good, and was essentially a tutorial for BASIC programming since BASIC was the OS. I got through th

My father bought us a TI-99/4A in 1981. The manual was quite good, and was essentially a tutorial for BASIC programming since BASIC was the OS. I got through that quickly and then just started trying stuff on my own, more and more complex. A lot of things were simpler since there were no external libraries, no network updates, even no real choice of language. You just keep reading and experimenting and building your skills. I kept a 3-ring binder of notes, things I'd written down or photocopied from books. My next computer was a Commodore 128. This had a better version of BASIC, more memory, and a CP/M option. You could also program directly in assembly or compile down to it, so I learned to read and write 8-bit assembly too. People are still learning new tricks with the old Commodore computers but by and large, you could still learn this machine inside-out in a way that's really impossible with today's more complicated, constantly updated systems. After that I went to university and had both teachers and internet access, and programming has never been the same since...