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> A Texas Instruments programmable calculator. He read the manual, played with it a bit, then found out he could automate some of his homework. Then found out he could make simple games. Then fairly impressive games.

Some thing never change. This is literally how I started programming too. "Hey, I can automate my homework" -> "Wait, I can write a program to play poker with all the time I saved by not doing homework."

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Wait what you guys actually save time by automating things?

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Same here. Twenty years ago my dad gave me a TI-85 and told me I could program it. I remember being stuck for a while until I learned that “string” meant text. The first game I built was hangman, using “split mode” where you could show half the screen as a graph and half as text

Ditto on the 85. Stick with the 85 or similar. I later had a 92 which was sweet but the symbolic capabilities made it easy to not retain a lot of early calculus.

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