Watching my Mom who was a "typist"(google it if your too young to know what that is!) ,enter in page after page of code from a computer magazine into our family PC. Then watch my Dad spend the next few days debugging her typos and then finally transfer the program to a tape recorder. I'm pretty sure the first game was a text based version of lunar lander.
Ten years old, typing BASIC games into a TRS-80 Model I from a book. Then at eleven, got a C-64 for Xmas, and taught myself BASIC and 6502 assembly. I had to learn assembly because BASIC couldn't handle the I/O speed of 2400 baud :-D
Now I write encryption libraries for a Major Cloud Provider
Copying some BASIC programs from some magazine (PC World?) onto "QBASIC" in DOS on an IBM 286 in the early 90s. Or entering x86 ASM via debug.com in DOS from the computer manual (which contained a section on how to program using debug). I can't remember which was first.
Edit: It's interesting a lot of people seem to have a similar experience (thanks BASIC!). I thought there'd be more "I played with JS in the browser in early 2010", or "I attended a programming bootcamp after studying law to get an engineering job" type experiences as well.
Typing in a page of Basic code from Atari magazine on the membrane keyboard of an Atari 400. After correcting all my typing errors (an even more tedious process) I was able to play a game where you would climb up a skyscraper, dodging hazards that were dropped on you.
