My first exposure to programming was GWBASIC on the 8086 PC clone of my uncle. I was 12. My uncle lived over 500km away from my home. I saw him once a year, wh

My first exposure to programming was GWBASIC on the 8086 PC clone of my uncle. I was 12. My uncle lived over 500km away from my home. I saw him once a year, when my family came together for xmas at his house. In the 12 months in-between I wrote tons of BASIC code with pencil. And then typed it in at xmas. That lasted for two years, until I had saved enough pocket money to buy my first PC. The experience was very similar. Stuff just ran & worked as expected. If you write code by pencil you just think a lot more before putting anything down on paper. As any corrections are a nightmare -- except for the last line. You can't just insert a code block etc.