 How did you get started in hacking/programming?
tomh: Freshman year in high school, I was programming in BASIC on my very own IBM PCjr.  After a few programs, I set it aside (or so it seems now) until my senior year, when I started programming in Pascal for an honors course which they called Computer Math at the time.What did I wish I knew at the time?  That there were more fun languages to play with other that BASIC and Pascal.  Perl came about in 1987, for example, and I wonder what might be if I started in on that language way back in the day.  Since you're already tuned into HN, I think you have that base covered.Side note: the thing that made me think I was any good at programming was a computer programming contest held by Dell Computers during my senior year.  I entered, and, while I didn't make #1, I did get in the top 10, which meant I got to have lunch with Michael Dell in 1989.