When I was around 12 years old I convinced one of my parents to buy a little book about C++ for me. I read the first chapter with great interest and wrote varia

When I was around 12 years old I convinced one of my parents to buy a little book about C++ for me. I read the first chapter with great interest and wrote variations of input and output things with pen and paper. Then I tried to follow the instructions on how to build and run a program on a computer. I managed to install the IDE they recommended; one called Bloodshed Dev-C++. I managed to type the code for hello world into the IDE, and I managed to compile the program. It produced an exe file that had a black terminal icon. I double clicked the exe and it opened and closed very quickly. It would only be several years later, when I started at the university, that this confusing interaction made sense to me. At the time I thought I had made some mistake and I didn’t understand what or why. But what happened of course was that the program started, printed its output and exited, and it all happened so fast that I just saw a window open and quickly close. Fortunately I did eventually get better introductions to programming. But that first experience was a bit unfortunate heh.