When I got started programming it was in the 80s, with a ZX Spectrum as was very common in the UK. I wrote about it here in more length: https://blog.steve.fi

When I got started programming it was in the 80s, with a ZX Spectrum as was very common in the UK. I wrote about it here in more length: https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html But the short-version is that we bought the computer, which came with a casette-player for loading games from. The casette-player was broken, so I started entering BASIC programs from the manual. Later I hacked games for extra-lives, because I wasn't a good game-player, and that eventually lead to me becoming a programmer - assembly and C, then later scripting languages and more high-level work. Once programming for money became less interesting I switched to doing it for fun, and evolved into a sysadmin (and nowadays I get called "devops engineer" which is a horrible title, but a lovely niche).