In Australia in the early 80s, we had MicroBee computers in our primary schools. I spent a good proportion of a whole year of out of normal lessons, and holed up in the computer room, as I was the only one in the class who had figured out how to operate the machine (including the teacher).<p>The default MicroBee install came with games, but they were all written in basic, with source code included. My proudest earliest computing memory for the age of 10 is editing the game code to &quot;Cricket&quot; to get it to spout profanities when you hit a 4 or a 6. At this stage I didn&#x27;t even know what the word hacking meant.<p>Several years later I got my first PC, a 386 with Windows 3.1. I was thoroughly confused that I couldn&#x27;t find the source code to change anything. Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn&#x27;t the same.<p>I&#x27;m forever grateful that the creators of the MicroBee chose to provide games in interpreted basic. I am certain that I wouldn&#x27;t have pursued a career in programming if not for that initial spark of wanting to understand how things work underneath the hood.