Back then as teenager meddling around with QBasic I intuitively realized that you could instruct this machine to do whatever I want - now I could stick the Turing-Church-Hypothesis label to that notion, but I think the experience and feeling of that potential power of programming goes without abstract algebra.
The problem of course: What to do with it? First thing we programmed was a digital telephone book. A chess program? - That's still the thing with apps nowadays I suppose. What should it do? Steer a nuclear power plant or recognize cats on pictures?

(As I didn't know what to do with it back then, I turned to physics and mathematics only to get a job all the university stuff was pointless for but required the skills I taught myself as a 17 year old.)