The first version of BASIC came to be on this day in 1964. Time magazine did an excellent article about the history BASIC a few years ago.
I still have vivid memories of coding my first dungeon crawling game in GW-BASIC when I was thirteen. I have been coding in one fashion or another for more than 25 years now. And that experience has served me and my career very well. I wouldn’t be nearly as good at problem solving without it.