The math class in school got some TRS-80 (trash as it was called) which nobody used. I stayed after class to play with them and learned its BASIC. My sister b

The math class in school got some TRS-80 (trash as it was called) which nobody used. I stayed after class to play with them and learned its BASIC. My sister bought me an AppleIIgs, some BASIC books and an obscurely dense data structure book. I started by typing in the BASIC programs from the books and learned how they work. Of course I spent way too much time playing computer games throughout high school. The only obvious benefit was it motivated me to learn about programming to write my own games, which never happened. I got into assembly because most games were written in it back then. UCB had a summer program to let high schoolers sign up for classes. I took a Pascal class but felt it's too restrictive. When I signed up for a night class on C in a community college, I knew I found my language. In university I got the formal training on data structure, compiler, database, Scheme/Lisp, etc. Compiler and database were my favorites. Somehow I didn't like AI. At the time I thought may be because it's the poor teaching of the professor, but now I think it's because there were fair amount of AI bullshit in the class. The things that I didn't have a chance to get into were network and graphic. It's years later that I took night class on network and communication at extension program. Of course, once started working, it was database, database, and database. Now if people asked is a formal CS education good? I would say yes it definitely helps. It forces you to explore many different topics that you might not be comfortable with.