Wow.<p>My dad was born at about the same time, but came into programming indirectly: he was an accountant, the company got a computer (Honeywell, maybe?), and he was told to figure out how to use it. So he was purely self-taught.<p>As a teen (so, in the mid-70s) I remember going in after hours to write programs with him, finding primes, perfect numbers and such. Fun times...