By 1988 I had already learned to write code (to be fair it was on a C64 with the book that came with it), and learned that I fucking hated programming and greatly preferred video games. LOL
I learned I liked it in college.
By 1988 I was already well into my second job out of university at NASA designing and developing ground based graphical interface controls for shuttle payloads in X Windows and C. First job was designing and developing pipeline and factory monitoring and automation systems in assembler and C ... SCADA.