My first memory of a computer is my dad playing our favourite song on VLC media player. I'd watch him work the buttons and always wonder why he used the funny app with an orange triangle which needed like 5 extra clicks instead of clicking on the song. That was before I gained an appreciation for Free Open Source Software.
My introduction to programming as a term came with Logo. Getting the turtle to draw geometric shapes was quite fun, but I do recall (frustratingly so) the silly errors which left parts of my drawings undrawn. Following the Logo unit, the next time I programmed was for my school's First LEGO League team. While I was still far from writing code, we'd use different "blocks" as control sequences to define our robot's behaviours. Using their IDE however taught me that software didn't always work as intended.
My appreciation for programming only settled in after I'd started building with it. My godfather gifted me a python book which not only gave me an excuse to sit at my laptop all day but also the knowledge to write software on it. My first project was inspired by my favourite game at the time – AQWorlds (I still dabble occasionally): a text-based RPG played on the terminal. You could go fight different monsters across the map. Having built this at 12 or so, and completely unaware of functions, I had copied the same 50 lines for each location. I still recollect cringing at this design choice when I returned to my script years later.
I started programming regularly after I started high school. I'll never forget happening upon my classmate from gym sitting on the library floor, hunched over their laptop, locked in. I remember seeing their IDE that looked like PyCharm but different so I walked over and got up in their business. Just like that, I'd find other people who enjoyed programming and computers and that has continued during my time in university as well. I am still close friends with a lot of the people from my time in high school and yes I do still bug most of them with random questions from time to time and if you're one of them reading this, I don't intend to stop if I'm being honest. Though CS, I've made a lot of meaningful connections and I'm grateful to everyone who indulged my curiosities. I hope to one day have the same effect on other people and hope I can help someone else make this wonderful world their home.