In high school, my trig teacher was not only a phenomenal instructor who would patiently explain and answer questions until every last student fully grasped the

In high school, my trig teacher was not only a phenomenal instructor who would patiently explain and answer questions until every last student fully grasped the concepts, but also, it turns out, proved to be a big enabler of my interest in programming. Instead of spending time working out the problems, I would spend that time every day writing a TI-BASIC program which would implement the algorithms we had just been taught and output not just the answer, but "shown work" as well. It was obvious to him that if I could write the product requirements for such a program and then implement it, I understood the material as well as someone who was solving by hand, so he fully blessed it. And I discovered that I definitely enjoyed programming (and even thinking up clever 'UI' design for my programs) more than solving math problems, although I did 'accidentally' learn to do that too along the way. I don't know if I would have been as confident to try programming later if I hadn't had that experience with TI-BASIC (indeed, a truly limiting language!).