This hits close to home. I grew up in Saudi in the 90s and had a very similar experience - stared out on an Atari 65XE, moved on to a 486 with QBasic, then QuickBasic, Turbo Pascal and later Visual Basic and VC++ (with a detour to Borland C++).
The jump from QBasic to Quick Basic and understanding .EXEs, compilation etc was the turning point for me in understanding programming, debugging and operating systems.
Your note on the shady stores reminds me of doing the same - in the pre-internet/warez era, the only place to get software in the Gulf was in shady malls selling floppies (and later CDs) chock full with pirated software for 10 riyals/dirhams
The jump from QBasic to Quick Basic and understanding .EXEs, compilation etc was the turning point for me in understanding programming, debugging and operating systems.
Your note on the shady stores reminds me of doing the same - in the pre-internet/warez era, the only place to get software in the Gulf was in shady malls selling floppies (and later CDs) chock full with pirated software for 10 riyals/dirhams