I learned to program in BASIC from a copy of &quot;The Beginner&#x27;s Programming Handbook&quot; that my father gave to me. Like many other commenters on this thread, I didn&#x27;t have a computer, but the illustrations in the book itself made it clear that programs were always written on notepads (just look at the cover <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computinghistory.org.uk&#x2F;userdata&#x2F;images&#x2F;medium&#x2F;PRODTHM-9483.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computinghistory.org.uk&#x2F;userdata&#x2F;images&#x2F;medium&#x2F;PR...</a>). As soon as I found a sufficiently yellow notepad I knew I had everything required to code.)<p>This book showed me how to code simple car crash games, in-memory databases, Eliza, bubble and shell sort.<p>I loved this book so much I&#x27;ve carried it with me over an accumulated 22,800km, in the hopes that one day, my kids too will have their imaginations full of gaudy little robots who run to interpret code on yellow spiral-bound notepads.