In a round-about sort of a way...
When I was ten I saved all my birthday money and put it towards my Xmas present - a ZX81!
I practically barricaded myself in my room and worked through the BASIC programming manual over the two-week Xmas holiday - it seemed amazing that a kid could have a computer, which up to then had been the sort of thing that only government institutions and major corporations had.
I had a borrowed 12" black and white telly (the sort with a dial on the front you used to tune it), but I couldn't find a tape recorder that would work with the ZX81. So I wrote my programs down in little spiral-bound notebooks and re-typed them each time. Larger programs I developed in separate sections, then one weekend I'd integrate all the bits, carefully back-annotate the listings, and then leave the ZX81 powered up all weekend so I could enjoy the fruits of my labours. (Meanwhile, my maths improved so much as a side-effect that I was bumped up to the top maths set.)
After nearly a year I sold my ZX81 (still a bit sad about that
) and put the proceeds towards my next Xmas present - a Spectrum!
So anyway, I learnt machine code (hand-assembled on sheets of squared paper!), eventually saved up for a Radio Shack datacorder, and years later a Rototronics Wafadrive, and generally got a lot of use out of my Spectrum right through my A-levels.
Then I did a stupidly hard degree in electronics and control engineering, because it seemed more interesting than computer science. (But it still had a lot of computer content, both hardware and software). With the savings from my summer programming job after A-levels I bought myself an Atari 1040STE to use during my degree, which seemed completely flipping incredible! 1024k of RAM! Amazing graphics and sound! Blue plastic squares that you jammed into the side with a satisfying clunk that cost a few pounds each and could store 800k pretty reliably! To be honest, I spent a lot of time that should've spent on my studies exploring all kinds of software development.
When I graduated I was dead set on being an electronics engineer, but there weren't many jobs around. So I picked up some agency work fixing minicomputer motherboards, and then calibrating control systems for gas pipelines. When I was there one of my colleagues said, "You can program in C? Why the hell are you doing this?!?" So I applied for two C programming jobs, got two interviews and then two offers, and went and did the most interesting of the two.
So that's how I ended up being a embedded software engineer. Home computers were a big influence, in a round-about sort of way.
