I am self taught, started learning programming around the age of 7-8. That was in 1987-88. The funny thing is that i did not know any english at the time, being from the middle east and french educated. I learned Basic from a french science magazine my dad used to get me, called "Sciences & Vie" (Life and science), and that used to have a programming section in Basic at the very end. Obviously all the basic commands are in english, luckily the magazines coders commented their code thoroughly in french. Initially, and before my dad accepted to get me a computer, i used to "think the code" and write it down on a my notebook (a real paper notebook), i think i still have that somewhere, i wrote some basic stuff like a simple text encryptor, calculator etc... Finally in 88 my dad got me a used commodore64, then two years later a used 80286 etc... It was quite difficult at first, for my lack of knowledge of english, much of my learning was by deduction from how magazine code was supposed to work and comments. There was no internet, no programming books around, the country was in the middle of a civil war, and few people knew anything about computers. But then, around age 12, the war was "over" and english was added to our curriculum, and things got a lot easier. I sold my first software at age 16 for 350USD, it was an internet & LAN gaming cafe management software, that used to time usage on computers and report to a central invoicing "server", written in Visual Basic.