My first working game I wrote from scratch was a typing tutor. I
   WANTED to learn how to type better and faster and so I made a
   simple game of random letters and a timer that kept score of
   hits and misses that would go faster and faster. I also wrote a
   companion program that would calculate characters per second and
   characters per minute. [I didn't know about "words per minute" -
   I was trying for raw speed]. I've been typing at 110 WPM since
   1990, so it must've helped smile emoticon I think it's really
   awesome that you had the experiences you had with the computer.
   I studied my BASIC book thoroughly, understanding everything I
   could do and even the "weird" stuff like Binary logic (which
   didn't matter as much in BASIC), I forced myself to understand.
   My next language was also Pascal: Turbo Pascal I think. I wrote
   a few thing in that as well in the early 1990s. Smuggling that
   computer in was truly a wonderful gift. Learning to program, I
   think _does_ something good to the brain. == I hope so smile
   emoticon Maybe it just feeds ego. I always felt as if I could do
   _anything_ on a computer. I'm 43 yrs old now. I *still* think I
   can make a computer do anything I want - and I do it all of the
   time tongue emoticon So maybe it just made me cocky grin
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