Interesting to learn about this and compare it to the American experience. I was born in 1982, and my educational computing history was all Apple; Apple II, the

Interesting to learn about this and compare it to the American experience. I was born in 1982, and my educational computing history was all Apple; Apple II, then the Mac, then the Performa, and then I can't quite remember. But Apple all the way through. We had nothing close to what's being described here, which I have to give the BBC a lot of credit for. In the earlier ways of my education, there wasn't much more to computer classes than letting us play games like Oregon Trail and SimCity. Later in middle school (for me, 1994-1996), we were introduced to Hypercard and MacPaint and WordPerfect as entry points into the computer as a professional tool. Hypercard in particular really stands out for me as a formative moment. It wasn't until high school (1997-1999) that elective classes were available for programming and multimedia art. Much like some of you, I learned to "program" virtually by purchasing C and C++ books and learning things on paper, with no compiler and no way to actually run the things I was learning. But I consider myself very blessed to have been raised in the time that I was, in a school district that I consider to be fairly ahead of the curve in allowing and introducing computers to the students. With all of that said, 99% of the most useful (and fun!) exploration came from my simultaneous discovery of the BBS, art (ANSI/ASCII), and demoscenes. But that is a whole other comment!