I like on this page:
http://news.digipen.edu/industry/qa-walter-bright-inventor-d-language/?c=r#.VPXCRmePKdI"I can't play chess without wanting to write a program to do it for me." When I was younger a lot of my friends were into Sudoku, but I decided to write a program to solve the puzzles instead.
I will say that I learned to program long before I took my 1st programming class. Maybe due to my background, I tend to believe programming languages are better self taught. Of course, I think almost everything is better when self taught. (Of course, hiring managers do not tend to see things this way. ) Also, it is good to do a lot of self study to ensure one is doing things in an efficient way as I do not encourage reinventing programming.
