When I was 12, I came across a book of introduction to the BASIC programming language (yes, it was THAT long ago, in the late 80's). Even though I've never even seen a computer until then (or for years after that), I was fascinated by the concept of programming, the ability to create entire worlds from scratch. A few years later, when I got my first computer, I taught myself the Pascal language and started writing programs for DOS (yes, still THAT long ago), and actually got addicted to programming. By the time I started college, I was already an accomplished programmer.
After graduating with a [login to view URL]. in Computer Sciences, I was immediately snatched up by the industry and worked at Intel for a couple of years, fixing other peoples' bugs in crappy enterprise software. It wasn't satisfying, to say the least, so, I decided to quit and go into the field of entrepreneurship and freelancing, building new and exciting products from the grounds up. And I never looked back.