We had a Commodore64. My dad used to be an electrical engineer and had programs on it for calculations, but sometimes I was allowed to play games on it.

When my mother passed away (late 80s, I was 7), I closed up completely. I didn't speak, locked myself into my room, skipped school to read in the library. My dad was a lovely caring man, but he was suffering from a mental disease, so he couldn't really handle the situation either.

A few weeks after the funeral, on my birthday, the C64 was set up in my bedroom, with the "programmers reference guide" on my desk. I stayed up late every night to read it and try the examples, thought about those programs while in school. I memorized the addresses of the sound and sprite buffers, learnt how programs were managed in memory and stored on the casette.

I worked on my own games, got lost in the stories I was writing, mostly scifi/fantasy RPGs. I bought 2764 eproms and soldered custom cartridges so I could store my finished work safely.

When I was 12 my dad disappeared, was found, and hospitalized with lost memory. I slipped through the cracks of child protection, felt responsible to take care of the house and pay the bills. After a year I got picked up and placed in foster care in a strict Christian family who disallowed the use of computers.

I ran away when I was 13, rented a student apartment using my orphanage checks (about €800/m), got a bunch of new and recycled computers on which I installed Debian, and learnt many new programming languages (C/C++, Haskell, JS, PHP, etc). My apartment mates joked about the 12 CRT monitors in my room, but I loved playing around with experimental networking setups. I tried to keep a low profile and attended high school, often faking my dad's signatures.

After a little over a year I was picked up by child protection again. My dad was living on his own again, partly recovered, and in front of a judge he agreed to be provisory legal guardian, despite his condition. I was ruled to be legally an adult at the age of 15, and got to keep living in the student flat (nation-wide foster parent shortage played a role).

OK, so this sounds like a sobstory. It isn't. I fondly remember my mom, my dad is doing pretty well, enjoying his old age together with an nice woman in some communal landhouse place.

I had a bit of a downturn from age 18-22 or so, lots of drugs and partying. Maybe I just needed to do that. I never finished any school (not even high school), but managed to build a relatively good career. My mom was a biochemist and left me a lot of books, and I started out as lab analyst for a pharma company, later went into phytogenetics, then aerospace (QA/NDT), and later back to pure programming again.

Computers helped me through a tough childhood.

They awakened a passion for creative writing, for math, for science as a whole. I'm a bit messed up, a bit of a survivalist, but currently quite happy and content with my life.

I try to keep reminding people around me, especially those who have just become parents, that you might feel like your kids need a perfect childhood, worrying about social development, dragging them to soccer matches and expensive schools...

But the most important part is to just love them, even if (or especially when) life is harsh and imperfect. Show them you love them with small gestures, and give their dreams the chance to flourish using any of the little resources you have available.

To all Juniors here(myself included):

If you ever feel discouraged just remember that a few thousand irrelavant mongolian horse nomads managed to conquer half of the known world in less than a hundred years, destroying countless empires and cultures far more sophisticated than their own using nothing but their wits and their brutal willpower.

If they could build a realm from Korea to Poland usibg horses, you can build some software using keyboards.

I don't know if it was the best moment, but learning this in python..

From Allison Kaptur btw.

My teacher at school who taught me programming. We were taught Java.

You see, Java is not a beginner's language, most say. But the way she taught it, the examples, the analogy, the explanation; she made it so easy.

She made us execute our first Hello World program (using BlueJ) and proudly said, "you're all programmers now!", that was when fascination took me over. I remember​ that moment till today.

Also, unlike regular exams, the programming exams required extreme competency. Marks were split up for algorithm and syntax. There were also questions like find the error in this algorithm for this output. She would always surprise us at the exams!

I had several glorious moments in class by being the first to answer most of her questions. At 13, it was kind of a big deal for me.
(Okay, who am I kidding, it still is :-P)

*sigh*

It was mostly just self learning from there. I switched schools and then there was college. Attending classes in college was like going to the gym with fat trainers. Utterly useless :-/ It just made me appreciate her even more.

Difference between C# and Javascript
Me: Hold my cup of tea.
C#: That's not a cup of tea.
Me: Hold my cup of tea, with two teaspoons of sugar in it.
C#: That's not a cup of tea with two tea spoons of sugar in it.
Me: Hold my cup of tea, with two teaspoons of sugar and milk in it.
C#: That is not a cup of tea, with two teaspoons of sugar and milk it.
...
Me: Hold my cup of tea.
Javascript: I'll hold your cup of coffee.