I learnt programming from a BBC Micro manual my Dad brought home from a second-hand shop when I was 5. I would just sit and read it and imagine the programs in

I learnt programming from a BBC Micro manual my Dad brought home from a second-hand shop when I was 5. I would just sit and read it and imagine the programs in my head. It's funny you mention that computers were a boy's thing - they definitely were, but two of my neighbours were girls and they both had computers before me, so I would annoy their parents by going around there as often as I could and getting them to help me type out pages of BASIC. Later my parents bought me a Spectrum, but I always wonder if the neighbours just paid them off in the end to stop me turning up at all hours of the day and night.