My first computer experience was in high school in 1978-79, my senior year. I got a C- in Algebra I and therefore wasn't allowed to take Algebra II. I'd gotten Cs in geometry, and mathematics just wasn't an interest to me. But I had to pass a math course in my senior year, in order to graduate. Computer programming sounded interesting. I was allowed to choose between COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, or Assembly. I picked BASIC because - basic = simple = more likely to pass.
We had teletype machines and amber-on-black monitors, dummy terminals hooked up to a pair of reel-to-reel refrigerator boxes in another room; a room with its own central air-conditioning unit, kept at 65° all year round. These computers ran all our school systems programs; attendance, grades, absences, teacher and student files, all cross-referenced.
Our first program, of course, was "Hello World." We didn't have punch cards, we had ticker tape. We had to be incredibly careful about folding our program so the reader wouldn't mistake a hole with a fold and ruin the whole thing. We also had to map out the entire program on paper first, with a template. I remember two of my programs. The first was a "make your own cheeseburger" program. Very simple - it asked you questions about ingredients, you'd say yes or no, and at the end it'd print out an ascii drawing of the resulting sandwich and the list of ingredients you selected.
The second program was a class project; a casino gambling day. My partner and I chose to do the roulette wheel. So we had to understand probability and statistics to plug in the correct odds and payouts for each number and color. To keep things from getting insane we allowed the player the option of selecting no more than 4 choices per play. "All black" plus "43" plus "1-15" plus "all even" - would be an option. It was a bear of a program to write but we learned SO much about mathematics, more than I'd learned in my junior and senior high school classes combined, up until then.
I only got a C in that class but it was passing and I was able to graduate and continue to college with merit credits in English and Writing.
Fast forward 20 years, and I decided to go back to college to take more programming courses. I went for Visual BASIC 6.0, C++, and advanced VB6.0 and advanced C++. Aced them all. Did nothing with it. But had a blast. Turned out that I actually learned something about mathematics back in high school, even though I didn't "get it" until 20 years later.
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