When I was about 13 years old (60 years ago) I discovered a programmed instruction text that taught machine language programming. Not assembly language, machine language. It would have a page of explanation, followed by a multiple choice question. Your choice of answer would direct you to another page in the book. If your answer was correct, you'd see the next page of instruction. If you were wrong the page you landed on would give an explanation that would hopefully clear up your misunderstanding. I gave a book report on the book which cemented my nerd cred for the rest of my time in high school.It was another 4 years before I was in college and was able to run a program on an actual computer. An Algol program on a Burroughs B5500 mainframe, complete with punched card reader and line printer. After I graduated I got a job with a defense contractor, and spent the rest of my career working for defense contractors. At one of my jobs I worked on the flight computer software for the Air Force C-130 cargo plane and I would never fly in one of those planes, but that's a story for another day.
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