When I was in third grade, there was a scholastic book fair that was selling the book "Make Your Own Web Page! A Guide for Kids"[1]. The internet for nine year old me was this mysterious, opaque thing; I had no idea that you could just "make" a web page. I'm not sure I know what I thought it was, but I guess I assumed it was reserved for businesses or something, and I didn't realize it was something that a kid could do if they wanted to. It wasn't terribly expensive so I asked my mom and she bought it for me.
I read through it and was immediately hooked. I know HTML isn't a "programming language", but in my nine year old mind I felt like some uber-hacker writing code and seeing it render on the screen made me feel so cool. It didn't hurt that the internet was still novel enough (~1999-2000) that my third grade teacher was extremely impressed that I did this by myself after I presented it to class for show and tell, and she actually called my parents to tell them how impressed she was.
Later I got into proper programming with a bootleg copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours" [2], a book on ActionScript I had found at Goodwill to use with a pirated copy of Flash MX 2004, and a C++ book that I got for my birthday one year. I eventually became reasonably ok at software stuff and I've built a decent career out of it.
I actually tracked down a copy of that original "Make Your Own Web Page!" on eBay and read through it again about two years ago, and while the HTML in there is dated and it's not terribly useful anymore, reading through it I couldn't stop smiling.
[2] I'm actually not sure if it was bootleg. I didn't just download a PDF, it was a website that seemed to just host the entirety of the content of the Sams book I think.
When I was in third grade, there was a scholastic book fair that was selling the book "Make Your Own Web Page! A Guide for Kids"[1]. The internet for nine year old me was this mysterious, opaque thing; I had no idea that you could just "make" a web page. I'm not sure I know what I thought it was, but I guess I assumed it was reserved for businesses or something, and I didn't realize it was something that a kid could do if they wanted to. It wasn't terribly expensive so I asked my mom and she bought it for me.
I read through it and was immediately hooked. I know HTML isn't a "programming language", but in my nine year old mind I felt like some uber-hacker writing code and seeing it render on the screen made me feel so cool. It didn't hurt that the internet was still novel enough (~1999-2000) that my third grade teacher was extremely impressed that I did this by myself after I presented it to class for show and tell, and she actually called my parents to tell them how impressed she was.
Later I got into proper programming with a bootleg copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours" [2], a book on ActionScript I had found at Goodwill to use with a pirated copy of Flash MX 2004, and a C++ book that I got for my birthday one year. I eventually became reasonably ok at software stuff and I've built a decent career out of it.
I actually tracked down a copy of that original "Make Your Own Web Page!" on eBay and read through it again about two years ago, and while the HTML in there is dated and it's not terribly useful anymore, reading through it I couldn't stop smiling.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Page-Guide-Kids/dp/04391340...
[2] I'm actually not sure if it was bootleg. I didn't just download a PDF, it was a website that seemed to just host the entirety of the content of the Sams book I think.