For a trip down memory lane, Jeff Atwood’s latest blog post about growing up with BASIC is a must read.

I grew up with GW-BASIC in the mid-80s.  I loved programming, and I actually made some reasonably complex software.  I’m convinced the accounting software I created was what landed me a scholarship to a prestigious private school here in Sydney.  Other software: a graphics program, many, many games (culminating in a loderunner type game with a level designer), a text editor and many others.  I even built an interpreted language IN BASIC (these days the cool kids would call it a DSL, and yes, I was crazy and young).