BASIC was my first programming language. In fact, it was the first thing that gave 
me any real interest in computers beyond video games. We had a computers in the 
home from an early age (an Atari XEGS and then an 8088 and so on), but the only 
thing that they seemed good for was games.

When I was in high school our computer lab had a mixture of typewriters 
(where I learned to type), 8086's, and some new IBM 386's (we also had a few 80286 
computers, but no one used them.) Again, I only saw them as toys, until I saw a 
friend of my older brother playing a game that he had created in QBasic. I was 
amazed that you could make your own video games. I asked him to give me a copy... 
but, being an "upper-classman," he decided that would be too kind an honor to 
bestow on a "lower-classman." Instead, he decided he would print out the code and 
make me type it in. To make it even more fun, he decided he would tear off half of 
the first page of code and make me figure that part out on my own.

To his astonishment, I actually did type it in. It was poorly written and 
needlessly long, but, not realizing any of that, or that I could do it 
differently, I typed it all in. Then I begged, borrowed, and stole until I could 
figure out the missing pieces from the errors that were thrown at runtime. And it 
worked. I started out really just wanting to have a game to play, and ended up 
realizing that having the power to make the computer do whatever you want was a 
lot more thrilling.

I trace my entire career to date, my ability to provide for my family, and 
some of my most beloved hobbies, back to that one single event.