I saw Hackers in the movie theater when I was 13. I left that theater and decided I wanted to be a hacker. So obviously, the first thing I did was grab my dad's copy of "Learn Visual Basic 3.0 in 21 days" and tear through it in about 3.

Since then I've been programming in constantly changing environments. Never doing one thing long enough to master and memorize, which is why StackOverflow is my savior. I know what I want to know, and SO nearly always has the specific answer I'm looking for. Without it I'm not sure I'd be able to be a programmer, and if I was, I'd be a hell of a lot slower.