I learned BASIC in 1985 on an Apple II, and 6502 machine language in 1987, while in high school. I was able to publish a 6502 machine language program on a national computer magazine that year. Back then we printed the hex code of the program on paper, along with some explanation, then mailed it to the magazine. The magazine stuff manually typed in those hex code on the computer, and if they thought it worked well, they'd just publish hex code of the program and the explanation. Interested readers would then just typed the hex code into their computer to try it out.

The publication validated that programming was something I liked and was good at, which became the main factor I chose computer major in college.