Self-taught, ran a game development company, now a happy Googler.
1) There was a ZX Spectrum at home, which booted to a BASIC interpreter. My dad taught me the basics (no pun intended) and I picked up the rest from experimentation and copying listings from Microhobby (http://www.microhobby.org/). Later moved on to gwbasic/QBasic/Quickbasic on the PC. I discovered C++ at 13 and I'm still trying to figure it out ;)
1) There was a ZX Spectrum at home, which booted to a BASIC interpreter. My dad taught me the basics (no pun intended) and I picked up the rest from experimentation and copying listings from Microhobby (http://www.microhobby.org/). Later moved on to gwbasic/QBasic/Quickbasic on the PC. I discovered C++ at 13 and I'm still trying to figure it out ;)
2) I was probably 4 or 5 - 1985/1986. My first documented "thing" is dated Sep 1986 (http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/img/1986-listado.jpg). At 10 I was making "games" (https://plus.google.com/110907875579750723363/posts/8RkT5K2K...)
3) I got a less-than-part-time job at 15, writing payroll software for a small real estate developer.
More details than you can possibly care about here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/about_me.html