I taught myself to do serious programming writing a drum sequencer for windows, back in 1994'ish. I was living and consorting with a bunch of techno producers, as well as being pretty deep in the underground rave scene. I'd spend hours in their studios and wanted to make my own music but couldn't afford the much coveted 808/909, so I spent countless nights replicating it.

I put out a couple of records using it. It also, inadvertently, lead to me getting a call from Richie Hawtin asking me to write audio DJ software for him. I told him it couldn't be done with current hardware, and I think I was probably right (this was 286/386 era). You couldn't put two sound cards in a system, so the output would have been mono. Maybe I was wrong. I'm not so sure.

http://www.sonicspot.com/tekknobox/tekknobox.html

Yes, the UI is hideous, but Windows 3.11 baby!

Edit: The follow up was called Alien Disko Systems 3000.

http://www.sonicspot.com/aliendiskosystems/aliendiskosystems...