This is so recognizable! I also got a strong interest in programming 1998/1999-ish and also had only a Mac at home. I emailed the guy who authored a chess appl

This is so recognizable! I also got a strong interest in programming 1998/1999-ish and also had only a Mac at home. I emailed the guy who authored a chess application (his email was in the splash screen) over our dial up connection. He told me I would need to learn C or C++ and I had no idea how to act on that (I was 8 or 9 at the time, living in a very rural area). 4 or 5 years later I got my own laptop and installed Linux on it. Then I started learning bash and tried (and failed) to install Linux From Scratch. That did get me to a point where I could program.