I began programming in 1992 when I was around 12 years old. The reason was that my desire to play video games some how managed to clash with the fact that, as a

I began programming in 1992 when I was around 12 years old. The reason was that my desire to play video games some how managed to clash with the fact that, as a kid, I had no money. I grabbed a copy of turbo pascal 3.0 and began figuring out how to program. I ended up creating a silly little DOS text game that involved trying to make a smiley ascii character collect diamond ascii characters. If I recall, you had to avoid the ever-so-dangerous asterisk bad guys.