I learned to program through a family member in a rather different way. My grandfather, who had since passed away, always talked to me about all the engineering feats he worked on at JPL. I was 12 when he died. He left me all of his computers and manuals, 5 and 7 inch floppy disks, and everything from MS-DOS to books that basically amounted to datasheets for the 68000, 8080, 8086, Z80, and a few other CPUs. most of what he left me was 16-bit era coding material, but it didn't matter, the principles were the same. In a school of kids that knew nothing about programming, knowing how to work with things that made adults head spin, made me feel special. I knew by the beginning of high school that i wanted to program.

I'll never forget all that my grandfather taught me, even though it was taught posthumously.