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I grew up programming the BBC Micro Model B. Starting a new school they had a computer lab kitted out with Archimedes, and once the computer teacher realised I could use it better than anyone else in the school (mostly programming in Basic), she left me to my own devices in the corner of the lab whilst the other students played around with "Turtles" (if you remember those robots).

I owe my career and livelihood to the Beeb.

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In 1997 when I was in 5th grade, the first computer I used was a Acorn (it was either a Electron or Acorn) that was a hand me down from some UK schools that were done with them. We had this professor that got them as a donation for out school in Romania and set up a lab with these things. They were pretty old for that time, I assume, but they were my first contact with such a beast and I was hooked.

I did not pay attention to their make and did not know the history, I just got to learn by interacting with them. It would be about 4 years more before I managed to persuade my parents to buy me an actual PC.

I took a 6502 assembly language class when I was in high school I already had some experience with it so I spent my time doing machine language monitor with disassembler and helped others. It was the best class I had at the time.

Me too.

My very first computer was a 4 bit TRS-80 pocket computer (actually made by Sharp), then moved to the 6502, the KIM-1, then 'upgraded' to a better processor with the Dragon 32, and reasonably crappy but still much better than the KIM graphics (essentially just 6 7 segment LED displays), the 6809 was so much nicer to program for. Then the BBC Micro hit general availability and the software that shipped with it was lightyears ahead of whatever else was avaialble for personal computers, and BBC Basic was actually a fairly good language to learn structured programming (can you imagine an era before functions?).

I too owe my career to the 8 bit machines that allowed me to own a proper computer.

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