I am fascinated by computers, and have been since before I could read. My favorite programming languages are Haskell and Python, and I'm no stranger to C.

My childhood was spent on DOS and Windows 95. After learning to read, I managed to learn the basics of programming with the help of The Secret Guide to Computers, GWBASIC, UCBLogo, LADYBUG Logo, and some LOGO book(s) I can't recall the names of. I didn't much like GWBASIC, but at least it had a printed reference manual. I had also tried QBASIC, but had trouble with the online help, which I later decided was probably because all of the text was in the same font (making it hard to tell the verbatim code from the other notation).

[... Windows, VB, DJGPP, Cygwin, Mindstorms, POV-RAY ...]

Eventually I bought my own computer and installed a copy of Linux, and that's when I really began to learn how computer systems work: technical documentation for most things was available online, and if that wasn't enough to satisfy my curiosity I could look at the source code.

[... Python ... Haskell ...]