I had several milestones:

My first program would have been for chemistry class, back in '74--our college had, um, a 360? 390? I don't remember--to solve the gas law, cube roots and all that stuff, in Fortran.

My first real original production item was in qbasic,in 1985. There was a piece of software called DataStar (right--part of the WordStar group), the first RDBMS I ever used. I was given a 6000-card mailing list, with people's interests, disinterests, phone numbers--you name it--and told to make it into a real mailing list. I did the whole thing from scratch (including the data entry). Then I had to write a qbasic program to use the data--much easier.

My first paid professional job (in 1993) was done in, god help me, Pascal--it was a brute force (I thought I could throw algebra at it, but I failed) enumeration of the possible bends and configurations of protein backbones.

I think I've said too much. Just remember what Saint Gracie Allen says:

They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it.