After learning QBASIC and then quickly pivoting to Python thanks to the advice of my peers on 711chan IRC, I read ESR's "How to become a hacker" which lauded Lisp as this magical language that will forever change the way you think. Wow, powerful stuff for a teenager to hear. I want to have elevated, magical thinking. So I downloaded DrRacket.
Years later, after a few years that were the beginning of a career in software, I was in jail. I took some math classes where they gave us programmable calculators. I was fucking enthralled to be able to code again. I used TI-BASIC to make a little lisp interpreter, which I called Prison Lisp.
So many games, all the glee of a child in gradeschool (which is comparable to incarceration in many other ways). The people in my pod (shared living dormitory type thing) all asked to play the games, it was like having a gameboy.
Out again, mid twenties, start to code again. Somehow, a few years with no computers hadn't affected my ability to code in the least. I was actually much better than before. I start competing for gigs on Upwork, supporting myself pretty comfortably. I get married, start a family.
My wife loves coding challenges, but has no professional ambitions in tech. So I show her Racket, she loves it. My daughter is curious and wants a different lisp, so I show her Clojure. She hates it, sticks with Python. No judgement, I'm a lifelong Pythonista at this point.
I think back, to a friend from that 711chan IRC chat. He was learning Perl and I had recommended he try out something else, taught him a bit of Racket. I Googled him a year or so ago, turns out he ended up making several contributions to the Racket source code, and is a big shot electrical engineer. Good for him.
Life is so beautiful and strange.