I was born in 1985, but our family could only afford a very old hand-me-down IBM PCjr back in 1991. I started programming BASIC by hand entering code from the e

I was born in 1985, but our family could only afford a very old hand-me-down IBM PCjr back in 1991. I started programming BASIC by hand entering code from the examples given in the manual. When I would get stuck or have a question I would ask my Dad and he would tell me I was "jumping the gun" because I would be deep into the latter half the the manual asking him what a word meant. I wasn't discouraged though and I think the time I spent learning to work through the issues myself was very valuable to my skill as a programmer later in life.