I started with BBC Basic running in an emulator on a PC aged around 12, I forget when I discovered QBasic but I was pretty excited about being able to use 256 colors VGA or 'high resolution' 640x480. I moved on to Turbo C++ when I wanted my mandelbrot set to display faster as I'd heard C++ was fast from somewhere (this was pre-Internet for me).
Initially I was pretty frustrated at how difficult it was to get into 256 color VGA mode 13 with Turbo C++ but remember the language itself seeming much more elegant even knowing the little I did as an early teen. Figuring out how to use inline assembly to generate interrupts to switch video modes, change palettes, etc. started me down the path of low level programming that led me to a career in video games though so it kind of worked out.
Initially I was pretty frustrated at how difficult it was to get into 256 color VGA mode 13 with Turbo C++ but remember the language itself seeming much more elegant even knowing the little I did as an early teen. Figuring out how to use inline assembly to generate interrupts to switch video modes, change palettes, etc. started me down the path of low level programming that led me to a career in video games though so it kind of worked out.