I think I became a programmer mainly because in the Neryungri gymnasium, where I studied, there was a computer class. And the computer science teacher allowed the guys to stay after class and play Duke Nukem 3D, WarCraft 2 and other time-slayers. But it was allowed to visit the informatics office (and stay after lessons) only to those who attended the computer science department and solved various tasks on basic'e - for example, to print numbers from 1 to 256 colored in different colors of the spectrum, and other monstrously complicated and insanely useful things. .
Of course, this is far from the only reason, and not even a reason at all - this is the first push in the direction of IT, and who knows, maybe if it were not, I would become an economist, lawyer, baker, turner, military, or someone else.
And what habra people have influenced the choice of future profession?