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A gift (c. 1997?) from my parents of a "box" of Turbo Pascal is easily one of the most influential moments of my life. It was such a great programming environment and the docs (books!) were fantastic and quite accessible. I'm still chasing the dragon of the feeling of programming I had back then.

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Absolutely. The rapid feedback from the near instant compile was so addictive. I would be in flow state for so long. If only I knew about unit tests back then.

I really only get that these days with toy challenge problems. That might also have a lot to do with the nature of programming now. So much is based on googling known solutions and scouring examples, etc. Probably a better use of time, but you don't get the ego trip of feeling like a wizard.

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