This was me. I was actually packing for a move today when I found an old hard drive that has a backup of my homedir on my family's old win98 machine which has all my old BASIC games and programs. At the time I channeled all my boredom into that thing and it led me on a path towards computer programming.

There was a really vibrant community on IRC and ticalc.org, which I was fortunate to find, because it was one of the only programming communities I know of at the time filled with people around my same age; it honestly changed my life. I wouldn't be where I am today without having found it.