I also started with trash-80 basic (a TRS-80 Model III to be exact). I was 11 at the time. The kicker? IT HAD NO PERSISTENT STORAGE! That's right, I got this thing as a gift from someone who didn't know what to do with it. It had no hard drives, no floppy drives, nothing!

I learned programming by repeatedly typing in and modifying examples from the BASIC book that came with the thing. You can imagine how frustrating it was to have to start over every time I turned it on.

Of course, I learned a lot, and now I'm a professional programmer, so some good must have come out of it :)