Probably starting with my Atari 400 back in the 80s. There was no internet and any low-level documentation was hard to come by and readily shared with the few o

Probably starting with my Atari 400 back in the 80s. There was no internet and any low-level documentation was hard to come by and readily shared with the few others with the same system and interest. All this is to say that I learned to dig, learn, and figure out stuff on my own, trying, failing, and keep going until I got something I was satisfied with. The other interesting thing is that the computer was over my budget so my parents only bought me the BASIC cart and Asteroids, but no storage of any kind. That meant that I would code for a couple days, never turning the computer off and when my program was done and I'd played with it long enough, I'd get bored and want to play Asteroids. That taught me not to get too attached to versions of programs I wrote. The next version was of course better, and I got faster writing them. After going through this process, anything after like school courses, university, co-op terms, learning C, using compilers, doing low-level firmware development all seemed like natural continuations. I'm also always seeking novelty and new ways of doing old things.