My first ever computer was a Christmas present, and tbh I was far more interested in the portable black-and-white TV that came with it. That got me my own dial-

My first ever computer was a Christmas present, and tbh I was far more interested in the portable black-and-white TV that came with it. That got me my own dial-tuned TV in my bedroom. Luxury! I swear I could even watch snooker on that thing... My parents weren't well off (Dad was a docker, mum worked part-time as a travel agent), living in the pretty run-down area of Northern city (the cheap end of L4 in Liverpool, UK, if anyone cares). The idea of getting my own computer was something I hadn't ever really considered. So, the day arrives, and I get the TV (Wow!) and a printed circuit board with a bunch of components, otherwise known as the ZX81 in kit form. I spend a good month or two watching TV, as kids are wont to do, and eventually parental pressure to "get that fucking thing working, lad" mounts to the level where it can't be ignored any more. Go down to the shed in the back yard (for Americans, a UK 'back yard' doesn't mean a garden at the back of the house, in our case it was a small, cemented over 'private alley' to the real alley (where the bins were) at the back of the row of houses. My dad had somehow crammed a shed in there) - and started to solder. Took the weekend, as I recall, because I wasn't great at soldering at 11, but eventually it seemed to plug in and turn on - got the BASIC prompt and everything. Read through the manual, and there was a demo line to type in and show things were working. I worked through the example, got sufficiently confident, and the entire family convened in the lounge (where the only other TV was) to watch this modern wonder... I typed in: PRINT 2 + 2 = 4 And it of course returned back the value 1 At which point my dad sighed in disgust, muttered "I knew it, he's buggered it", and walked out the room. It took quite a bit of persuasion to introduce the concept of 'logical truth' to him... I've never done CS (I'm an aging physicist if anything from 30 years ago matters in that regard) but I was hooked, initially on games, but also on what you can actually do with these things. These days I live far away from that 2-up/2-down Liverpool terraced house, in sunny California. Been working for Apple for nigh on 20 years, and coding for the last 40 or so. I don't think any single thing has changed my life more than that ZX81 kit. It wasn't even my favourite 8-bit computer (that would be the Atari XL I bought when Dixons were selling them off for £99 with a disk-drive) but it was certainly the one with the most impact.