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I learned to program on a HP 2115 minicomputer whose primary IO methods were paper tape and a teletype. One evening while trying to get something to work, I typed "why" at the command prompt. The computer replied "Why not". Since HP published the source code for the basic OS (HP Assembly Language), I dove in to see if I could find where "why" was being parsed as a legal command. As I remember, it was very well obfuscated using octal constants for both data and executable code.
I guess I'll have to go with the HP2115's answer to the question Why? Why not!
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Started on HP 2116B, 8K memory, ASR33 TTY, 75 IPS tape drive, 200 channels slow speed DAC, 12 channels of 100K high speed DAC.
One manual covered hardware and software.
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I designed and built a ADC card. We were recording nerve signals on a high quality multi-channel analog tape recorder, playing it back into the computer at 1/16 speed and doing FFTs and correlations to see how the nerves encoded information.
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They were manipulating a cat's knee joint with a swept sine wave and measuring the activity on a nerve in the upper leg. They found that there were sensors in the knee that were sensitive to both position and velocity, with a hint that there was some sensitivity to acceleration.
The data processing was all done in HP's Fortran and took a long time. After they upgraded the computer to a HP 2100, which gave you access to the micro-code, I created a couple of new machine instructions that sped the FFT up by 15%. The 2100 systems also came with a disk drive that has both a fixed and removable cartridge. I am guessing that the platter was 14" in diameter and held maybe 2MB.
How was the HP being used in your situation?
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Apple ][ with Apple BASIC -- Why? Because there were almost no useful programs then; it was the pre-VisiCalc era. Then I added a CPM card and a roaring-loud hard disk drive the size of a shoe box. Followed that with Compaq PC, Borland's Turbo Pascal and Turbo Prolog.
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I was stationed in Italy from 86 to 90 (Vicenza, airborne infantry) when I found Tandy computers at the PX. I bought one with two floppy drives and the disk had gwbasic on it. I started messing around with it and reading everything I could about working with computers and programming. I haven't stopped yet. Being able to get the computer to do something makes it worthwhile.
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I was in college to become an EE (back in the 70s) and came across Byte magazine. Started reading about these new things call microprocessors and decided I could build a board with one of these, so I did (with a z80 processor). It was finished the day after my last final senior year. All I did for the next 3 weeks (until the start of my new job) was learn to program it. I had a whole 4K of RAM and a 2K EPROM containing the Zapple monitor program. There was no programming language so I was programming machine code by the numbers, poking values into memory, executing code at specified address, dump memory, etc. It was fascinating! At the new job, they were just starting to design a microprocessor base (Motorola 6800) smoke detector tester/calibrator. When they found out I had a computer at home, they asked me if I wanted to work on that project (of freaking course!!). I've been designing/programming ever since, mostly embedded systems.
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I taught myself BASIC from a book my dad had on Dartmouth Basic back in 1978. Why? Why do you do anything when you're 14 -- because I wanted to.
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My first coding was was in 1981 when some office donated a boatload of Commodore Pet 2001 Series computers to the school district I was in. My middle school math teacher ended up with them in his room, and offered to stay an extra hour after school every day to give anyone access to them that wanted it, in exchange for $20 a head, while letting us all know he knew nothing about them. One of my friends manages to get his hands on a manual from his dad's office, and we all started teaching ourselves Commodore Basic.
The next year, we all signed up for the "all new" computer class at the High School. They didn't really teach us anything. The teacher just came in and told us to do whatever we wanted, as long as we each turned in one "educational game/program" each quarter that could be handed over to the grade schools in the district so they could do something with the donated computers.
My Sophomore year, I consulted for the district to put their 5x7 index card attendance system into a database program. They bought the database program, and I designed the system (with its amazing 5.24" floppy based data transfer system) and trained all of the attendance secretaries in the district on how to use it.
That was also when I learned the value of getting signed contracts before doing any work.  They originally promised me $2000 for the job, but when everything was done, they told me that as a government entity they could not legally pay money to a minor as an independent contractor, but would make sure that I received an A grade in the computer class as compensation for my efforts (as if I wasn't already getting one). Lesson learned.
Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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You mean something like:
y:=0;
y=0;
y<-0
set 0 as y
Y is in there somewhere.
Oh something else. I start in 1983 in High School with an Apple IIe. From there onto Pascal, C, C++, FORTRAN, Lisp, Java, VB.NET, C#, SQL, JavaScript, Python and the list goes on.
Of all the WHY in CODING:
WHY: FORTRAN code must start on specific column (older one).
WHY: VB.NET required _ for line break.
WHY: Python code blocks by indentation.
WHY: JavaScript "this" is the most confusion of all.
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I took a programming class at Cal Poly when they got their 1st computer (1964-an IBM 1620 w/20K BCD bytes memory), and I got hooked (there was no way I was going to make a living as a Math major). Fortran II and assembly (I still have the instruction set manual-it was small). If you put a handheld radio up next to the console and ran a particular program, it would play 'Flight of the Bumble Bee'. 
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I didn't want to work outside. Long ago. Still don't; unless it's warm.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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At the right age, I got to hear my father on the phone talking to an operator. Changing cards (JCL) in a deck to rerun a job that had thrown a OC7, and that he would be on his way back in. Oh, the mind puzzle.
In high school, 1980, we had an IBM 127 card punch. Our teacher would take our deck to the local community college and bring back the green-bar. We were NOT to: 10 I = 1, 20 PRINT I, 30 I = I + 1, 40 GOTO 10. And yet, someone in the class did. I would love to have seen the operator kill that job.
Why? Puzzles. From both sides - user wants to do what? ok, now how do I get it to do that. And the world keeps turning, the technology changing
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Learned basic back in the 70s by reading books in the library, don't know why it just captured my imagination. Had a notebook filled with hand written programs but didn't get my first computer (zx81) until 3 or 4 years later. I remember as a teenager being really angry at my dad because they were throwing out an old mainframe at the place he worked and he wouldn't let me have it to keep in the garage!
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I learned in 1966 because I wanted to know what those newfangled computer machines were.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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10GB/sec - wowser...
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Must be the 'Ax effect' 
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The only downside is that if you have it at home, it's only as wide as the pipe that feeds it. Standard coax-powered cable modems are stuck at 10mb I think, but streaming in-home from a media pc to the home theater pc would be fantastic.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Call me oldfashioned, but I'm already pleased with the speed of the WiFi in my new Dell notebook.
Must admit that we have glassfiber here, and the modem is a FritzBox which is also quite speedy ...
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We have coax coming into our house and I get a 1Gb service (meaning about 800Mb max).
I think it's because it's so damn cold here the cables are essentially superconducting.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Standard coax-powered cable modems are stuck at 10mb I think
My cable modem gives me 250 Mbps.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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That's like you driving your mustang crazy fast ... and then slamming the brakes at the red light 100m down the road. Or in my case, our ISPs feed to our building.
Now 5G, on the other hand, gets me excited. 10-20 Gbps. Goodbye landline.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I have my tin foil hat.
They've been looking for proof of the danger of cellphone radiation for nearly 40 years (well above the threshold for effects to be apparent) and the latest I heard is it's still all clear. Or they've found weak correlation. Or there's no chance. Or...
I'm far more likely to die in a car accident.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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