That actualy reminds me of one of my early attempts at programming, which I did on paper before having any real contact with a computer. It was to play blackjack. A friend had a dial-up terminal and we used it to play Zork, and then to run some BASIC/Fortran tutorials. That's all I knew, but I was hooked!

When I really did learn how to program, it was with the manual from Radio Shack that came with their original "Pocket Computer". 1K of RAM, 24-character display.