17. Fortran on punch cards submitted to an IBM 360/50 in 1974. That's all it took and I was hooked for life.

+1 for the American Basic Science Club kits. I had more than a few chemistry sets too.

I still actively develop for VMS for a customer. The hardware has all turned into virtual machines running on (ironicly) HP servers. I spent most of the 80's and 90's coding Ada, C, C++, and (my personal favorite) VAX assembler. Two things I really miss that the Windows World never had: 1) the absolute consistency of the OS and run-time. Things worked exactly as you expected them to. 2) The fabulous documentation set. Everything explained, examples given, every return code and side effect documented. Fantastic OS for its time.

I always use funny names for endless loops that wait for a condition then break. as in: const bool TheAZCardinalsStillSuck = true; while (TheAZCardinalsStillSuck) { ... } although the above example almost broke in 2008 - 2009, that code is secure this year.