Comment by inopinatus

My Acorn BBC Model B booted straight into BBC BASIC as well, and I too thought it was awesome and taught myself BASIC straight away, and then 6502 assembler and latterly BCPL and so on. I was even younger than OP.

But I think we were the exception, even if we didn’t realise it at the time. In hindsight, my interest was most definitely not shared by my peers.