This was the first program I ever wrote:

10 print "I am cool!" 20 goto 10 RUN 

The above was typed into a Commodore 64 that sat unsupervised on a glass counter in the electronics department of a K-Mart. I was 8 years old, and I lusted after the C64.

I repeatedly begged my dad to buy one, but we couldn't afford it. My early programming education consisted of thumbing through store copies of the Commodore 64 Basic Programming Manual and Compute!'s Gazette magazines. I used to copy the program listings in the back of the magazines onto paper over and over until I had them memorized, then go to K-Mart and type them in. These programs were simple compared to today's stuff: blocky sprites that moved across the screen or text-based guessing games. As simple as they were, though, I got a fulfilling sense of creation when they ran. How many things can put a smile on your face like that?

A couple years later my dad surprised me one day by bringing one home. I was ecstatic and spent nearly all my time devouring the basic manual, more magazines, writing programs, playing copied games (thanks ...  Read More