For me I can distinctly remember watching Ferris Bueller change his absences[0], all from his computer at home.<p>Watching that scene was awe-inspiring and started me down the path of infosec that's grown into programming.<p>Curious to hear everyone else's.<p>[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh_vLKlz2Mc
Modifying Halo 2 on Xbox Live to have massive auto-aim. At the time (2004/5) modding was still pretty new so it was surreal getting the attention of a world class player simply by editing some values in a hex editor. Computers are modern day magic to a lot of people.
VBA in Excel got me interested. It was very easy to build GUIs that did simple things. That started me off with a magnifier and registry cleaner application (way over scope for my skill level) and kicked off my interest in development.