Summary of below: Since I was not aggressive/assertive and since I was coming up as a female in the 80's, a lot of my life track on the way to becoming a programmer was spent trying to deal with the stigma associated with my desire to do so.

1982-83 (grammar to high school age):
My parents bought a word processor in the 80's that you could also program. It had orange letters on a black screen. I picked up the manual and I tinkered with it, typed in a few BASIC programs.

My parents didn't want me in the house playing with it and I wasn't motivated because what I got done was so limited and my imagination could only take me so far at that point.

In spite of that, I went to the neighborhood library to learn more, but there was nothing really there except for books on electronics. I tried to get friends and family to help me but no one could or would. For some reason going to the library I felt the need to hide my interest. I vividly remember hiding in the library stack with a few books on electronics one summer.

I am pretty sure they thought I was weird for having this interest. I was supposed to be doing more "female" things. My mother actively prevented me from doing other geeky things like bike maintenance (too greasy! and not feminine!).

1985 (17 years old):
When I got to college, they didn't teach programming in a sane way. We had this book, "Oh! Pascal" and it sucked so hard I dropped the class. But the only work-study job I could get in college was administrative assistant work. They hired me then fired me (I'm not a secretary type), and strongly suggested I work for the computer geeks. To this day I have no idea why they pushed me there. But they had me doing tape back-up and whatnot. I enjoyed it.

1992-1994:
When I was about 22 or 23, I got into programming while I was stuck in the Navy. I hated the Navy and they treated me like an idiot so I used my free time to self-study C language programming. Once I got through the course I realized I would have to pass a real university program and I just couldn't take the classes where I was stationed (not available).

1995:
I got a career in software sales (6 years of that). I was entered sales info into a Unix box with an Informix database and I got to the command line by accident and started using gopher and usenet and Pine. I figured out how to install Slackware Linux.

I eventually became a sales engineer (1 year of that), then started work in network administration (2 years) which led to web development (Javascript/ASP) and eventually I taught myself Java (about 2001), then C# and now I do C++.

While I was working in network support/administration (hoping to eventually work my way into something better) for a public relations firm in Chicago, one of the PR seniors asked me where I went to school while I was fixing his computer. I told him and he realized I went to the same school as he did (prestigious, expensive midwestern university). He then said, sorrowfully, "It really is a shame then." He meant to imply that I was doing work beneath my capabilities and shouldn't be happy about it.

My battle may be dissimilar from others here. As a black woman I was supposed to be aiming at being a lawyer or business owner, not a software geek. My father worked as a tech in various roles for the phone company and I went home for a holiday a few years ago and I was so proud I got my first real programming job and he responded with "why would you want to do THAT for a living?"

It was at that moment I realized I had been living for approval of others and I felt released to do exactly what my talents and desires drove me to :)