When I was that age in the early 00's, my father set me up with an emulated Tandy Color Computer 2. He figured that he had learned on it, so why not his son. La

When I was that age in the early 00's, my father set me up with an emulated Tandy Color Computer 2. He figured that he had learned on it, so why not his son. Later on he bought me a real one (and some cassette tapes that he had used with his. They still worked). There is a real magic, interacting with a computer like that. It had almost no functionality outside of what I could program on it. It had simple graphics, sound, and tons of hidden functionality that was just a POKE away. (For instance POKE 65495,0 would increase the clock speed). Going from BASIC to my first "real" programing language was a mind bend. It took a lot of experimentation for me to wrap my mind around variable scoping.