My dad was a DBA and did a lot of C code for his work. He got me a PC clone for my 7th birthday and a copy of Borland Turbo C. I made all sorts of strange code widgets and ascii animations, and also ran a BBS which put me in a lot of nerdy circles. Learning coding by osmosis I suppose.

I did dad's homework up into my mid teens, so it was a good payoff for him! :)

I never asked him if he liked the book Tom Sawyer. I bet he did.