I think the first time I tried programming was when I was simply looking at QBasic code, astonished how Nibbles and Gorillas work and thought, "these characters I see on the screen before running the game are what make the game function? If so, how?" This was on my father's 486/33 I believe, although I barely remember his 386 which could have been what it was on. Regardless, I was probably 5 or 6 and I tried messing with those characters on the screen to modify the game. Later my parents bought me one of those kid laptops with a little 6 inch x 3 inch screen that you could get from Toys 'R Us and I found out it had a programming option where you can type in QBasic code...I found some code in a math book we had at home, and typed away. After I got the one from the book working, I modified them to see what my changes would do.