I'm now a (Linux, mostly Python) software developer and it would never have happened but for the Spectrum. I still have a bunch of old hardware obtained in the earlier days or in the few years around/after I went to university when I was most connected to the Spectrum community via c.s.s, my Spectrum webring (anyone remember that? in late 90s), and friends/organisations. Am thinking about selling some/most of it but need to check what I've got, what condition its all in etc, and finish coming to terms with that, cos there's lots of memories tied up in it especially for a while in my teenage years when I was struggling with other things in life and this world was my escapism.
My introduction to them came in 1990 with a +2A for Christmas after much saving up myself too, having learnt the basics of BBC BASIC from a book in the school library I used to fanatically go and read most lunchtimes. Hadn't yet done any real programming outside of the motorised 'turtles' that could use Logo (if I'm remembering the name right) on a BBC micro at primary school in the UK (which I wouldn't count for much, really).
I used the +2A for some of my schoolwork having saved up for/part-time worked towards a b&w Star dot-matrix printer - GCSE project write-ups, having promised I wouldn't just use it to play games on. I wrote a spreadsheet in Spectrum BASIC (which supported R?C? references and formulae too with multiple nested levels) that was about 20KB, plus a rota planner for my Dad he actually used for a year or two.
Not really much of a gamer, though I used to be more so; fave is probably R-Type (still enjoy a version of that on my phone occasionally); with Elite, Fighter Bomber, then among also-rans would be Operation Wolf for mindless escapism (broke at least one joystick with the many hours on that iirc). I have a strong memory of AMC but was only borrowing it and a later attempt to get a copy fell down/didn't work properly/... (I forget).
Then I started learning machine code and after a few false starts (lots of unfinished projects), Your Sinclair in its last days (months) introduced me to the demoscene via the cover-tape and I was so impressed with these experts of stretching the hardware I had to get involved. So I wrote to the Public Domain libraries and having got a few examples almost at random, much letter writing started. This eventually led to a couple of my own demos and utilities being published (getting a +D drive really helped with all that), having rare visits to shows around England hosted by Format/Crashed (iirc), making friends around the UK and visiting a few of them occasionally (and once in the Netherlands - a WOS team/helper iirc). I managed to break a Speccy via ACB DIY installation but it was much cheaper to get hold of one 2nd hand at that point, and I've picked up various Spectrums/clones and interfaces, 2nd-hand(used), over the years since (+3,a 48k clone, MF3/other MF,IF1,digitiser,another disk i/f, ...).
My last project I worked on seriously was back in early 2000s, not sure I even have the 10s of KB of assembly source files from that anymore as I lost some of them at one point - an aim to provide auto-detection of hardware and API libraries to do standard operations for as many different Spectrum interfaces as possible, and maybe a gui kind of thing over the top. Still got a number of games tapes back in storage but I think all of them are already digitised or I'd try to help rescue them.
This is me - Datasoft (not the entity that did commercial games/music for, another one):
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... el_id=3316
Where has the time gone?
Although I do have some of my last Amiga, an A1200 in a tower case, with all the bells and whistles 
