My start in computers had nothing to do with software, but a book. The "Tom Swift" novels by Asimov. I thought working with computers would be the neatest thing and had to wait several years before I had a chance to work with one. Fortunately, my high school offered programming (early 80's) and from my sophomore to senior year I learned Basic, RPG II and Cobol. My first "PC" was a TI-99/4A and your code was stored on cassette tape. I had the speech synthesizer and one of the first programs I wrote was a "Speak and Spell" type program to help my brother learn to spell better.

Up until my first computer class, I wanted to be a doctor, but once I got a taste of programming, my medical career went away and I've been working with computers ever since.