As seems to be common, I had my first exposure to programming through BASIC, looking at programs I got from my older sister's friends or copied out of old magaz

As seems to be common, I had my first exposure to programming through BASIC, looking at programs I got from my older sister's friends or copied out of old magazines. My 7-year-old mind didn't quite grok the difference between psuedo-code and real code, though (for which I blame the BASIC language). Then LEGO started selling the RCX; finding LEGO's graphical programming environment overly constricting, I learned NQC, which lead to real C and a little bit of FORTH to program robots. That path eventually exposed to the basics of neural networks and some other basic ML systems. Then I got frustrated with not being able to make my parents' Windows desktop do cool things like my robots could, so I discovered Webmonkey (rest in peace) and taught myself JavaScript and Perl over a couple of weekends, and started writing all kinds of silly DHTML games and scientific command line calculators and file compressors / encrypters. A couple of years after that, I got on my middle school robotics team, and continued writing C code for microprocessors. Then I tested out of introductory CS in high school, passed the AP test without taking the class, and went on to Computer Architecture, Intro to AI, and Computational Physics, and serving as an assistant student administrator in the high school CS lab. And that's probably far enough past getting started to make a good ending point.