It wasn't software, specifically, that got me hooked. I was an auto mechanic in the late 70's/early 80's. I attended a Delco-Remy seminar on the first electronically controlled carburetors where they provided a fairly in-depth view of what was going on inside that chip. Electronic ignition systems becoming very popular at the time. The Ford EEC IV system was pretty impressive. It was used in Indy cars, with some programming tweaks but otherwise essentially stock. That was when it clicked what the combination of software and data could do since it was accurately managing firing each spark plug multiple times per minute at 9000+ rpm. Today, Formula 1 uses a Microsoft supplied ECU that can manage the same ignition control at upwards of 21,000 rpm.

The first hardware I used was also a CP/M-based machine. It had 2 8" 1mb floppy drives. I remember wondering how I would ever fill those disks. While I was using Wordstar for word processing, the first language I learned on it was BASIC. I was too lazy to roll my chair 4 feet to change the font settings on my Panasonic 24 pin LQ printer, so I wrote a BASIC program to do so. I always saw that as the epitome of laziness but I've also seen that a certain amount of laziness leads to automation of the mundane...a good thing.