My grandpa bought me a TRS-80 when I was 4-5 (don't recall exactly) because "computers are the future." My only cartridges were LOGO and Sokoban so if I wasn't in the mood to push boxes around...
I don't know if you can really call it programming but I'd spend hours writing out huge I/O conversations with the computer that only worked if you knew how it was supposed to go in advance. I found it fascinating.
"Hello, I'm a computer, what's your name?"
"Hello [name], how are you feeling today?"
"I'm glad you're feeling [feeling]!"
etc
And I had the companion radio shack cassette deck that you could use to store programs on. I always had to copy those programs out of the book because I didn't understand them at all.
Sounds similar to my experience. I remember writing a text-based flight simulator on the TRS-80 in BASIC named "F-14" when I was 10 or 11. It was terrible. My takeoff sequence simply incremented your speed, printed it out, and required the user to hit the "stick back" key on the keyboard once you were in the right speed range. The game was basically a text adventure with a few realtime elements thrown in. It also had music which was more like a set of random beeps that sometimes ended up sounding like a melody. Writing about it now makes me want to build it again.
I remember how excited I was when I was able to write data to a floppy from one of my programs. I felt like I could conquer the world.
All I had back then was the BASIC manual, but I was able to learn enough to be dangerous. My first real exposure to probability was the sample code in the manual for a Craps program. Great stuff for a kid to learn!
I don't know if you can really call it programming but I'd spend hours writing out huge I/O conversations with the computer that only worked if you knew how it was supposed to go in advance. I found it fascinating.
"Hello, I'm a computer, what's your name?" "Hello [name], how are you feeling today?" "I'm glad you're feeling [feeling]!" etc
And I had the companion radio shack cassette deck that you could use to store programs on. I always had to copy those programs out of the book because I didn't understand them at all.