Why? I wouldn't have guessed your age from the article at all, in fact. I wrote several submissions for COMPUTE!'s Gazette when I was in high school. Yeah, I could have improved the prose and tone a bit, but the tech was sound or it wouldn't have gotten through the editorial process. It's a shame type-in mags and the old hobbyist journals have died, because it was a great way to encourage writing, it was fun to see your name in print, you had a coding standard that was public to aspire to and you made some okay money.

Wow, congratulations. I was 11 years old when I read this article, and many others like it.

I learned to hack in a shop called Computerland, in Perth, WA. Immediately after school, I'd march through the heat from school down and into the shop, which had great A/C of course, insert my floppy (most valuable thing in the schoolbag), and continue typing in code, reading mags, and so on. As long as I was actually doing stuff (i.e. not just playing games), the sales guys were cool with me hanging out, every day for weeks, hacking code.

So, BYTE and all the mags I could buy, pretty much got me booted up - and for that I have to say: a) very well done on a great article, b) thank you for showing up here and now, and what have you been up to since?

:)