Started typing BASIC from my ZX81 manual because the machine could do little otherwise, moved on to a bit more on the C64 but it really kicked off when I got an

Started typing BASIC from my ZX81 manual because the machine could do little otherwise, moved on to a bit more on the C64 but it really kicked off when I got an Amiga. A lot of games in AMOS and then after weeks of delicate preparation, convinced my parents to buy me a book that was a spin-off of an Amiga mag, it came with the full version of Dice C (£25 was a lot of money for a book for a 14 year old!). Later I got a C compiler off a PC mag and dabbled with that, moved on to Delphi and then by the time the internet made an appearance in my household I began with the HTML and shortly afterwards Perl and then PHP. It was only at this point that I started learning "properly". I guess partly because it was time and partly because it was the first time I ever had some level of access to best practices, theory and whatnot.