I was typing out BASIC programs when I was around 6, got to love growing up with the Spectrum/C64 and the wonderful BBC Micro. I think it worked well; I still r

I was typing out BASIC programs when I was around 6, got to love growing up with the Spectrum/C64 and the wonderful BBC Micro. I think it worked well; I still remember it being so magical (a since overused word sadly), and a lot of my early tweaking was PEEKing and POKEing around in games to cheat. The OP has it right -- if you're doing something you want (building a Dr Who game, changing your high score, turning all the baddies into strawberries, making a spider run around the screen to scare your mum) that's the best, dare I say only, way to learn. Having said this, nobody at my school could program at all (despite the BBC's best efforts). I didn't learn "real" programming until university; web scripting and PHP before that. Maybe that's why I'm such a hacky coder even now.