For me, it's my uncle who let me use a Commodore Pet and then a Sinclair Spectrum from the college that he worked at. This experience sparked a fascination with computers that lasts to this day.
So aside from yourself, who has had the biggest impact on your software career and how?
EDIT: thanks for the answers, there's some great advice for helping to influence others. @rp's comment about seeking out people smarter than you is spot on!
Well, first my father who bought a computer when I was 9 (also a ZX Spectrum clone, HC-90) then the technical leader at my first job. He is a truely passionated about software creation and he always jumped to help us no matter his own deadlines.
He is the kind of programmer that doesn't simply fixes your problem. He teaches you how to fix problems and most of all how to avoid having a problem in the first place. Code reuse, intelligent arhitecturing and many of these have been taught to me by him. Thank you, Ionut Scarlat!
I had two and they both had the same background. They worked on the Sage Air Defense system.
The first influential person was my second computer instructor when I started training in the Air Force. He taught Honeywell Assembler. His clear explanations, practical examples, and computer history lessons taught me more in a week than I learned in the level 3 and 5 Air Force correspondence courses that I had to take before I was allowed to cross train into programming. His instruction really turned the light bulb on for me on how a computer works and has helped me throughout my career. I was fortunate to have him because he retired right after teaching my class.
The second major influence on me was an instructor that I had at Offutt Air Force Base. He taught me PL/I, Cobol, Fortran, and IBM Assembler. He had the same characteristics as my instructor for Honeywell Assembler. As part of training we had to simulate a refueling problem between several tankers and B-52's. We had to solve the same problem in each of the languages. The techniques he taught me in problem solving and debugging created a solid foundation for me. Those skills have been my strengths for the last 28 years.
I've had many mentors during my career, but three stand out. I was lucky enough to fall in with several people lots smarter than me. Two of the three I had admired from afar for many years. I was stunned to finally meet them and even more stunned that over time I nearly earned my bones as their peer. It won't mean much to anyone here, but to Mel Beckman, Paul Conte, and Eduardo Ross, I salute you and what you did to teach me and inspire me.
Out of it, my advice is to never stop seeking out people smarter than you. If you're the smartest person in the room, you need to move on!
rp
Well, the first computer I got to play with was of course of great importance, and it was because of my parents that I got the chance of developing my 'skills' on it. Don't forget that it is really important to have a feeling of full control over what you are doing.. While the first computer we got was not that cheap, I still got the chance from my parents (by not disallowing me to do it) to open it up and see what was really going on inside, or to meddle with the software on it.
Those first steps really were important, because you know how the things work together so you don't have to be afraid of it (being afraid of computers, or doing something wrong with it is something i see all the time with other people who are not that skilled with computers)
Secondly, in high school I got to learn a basic programming language called pascal. and that was something awe inspiring, I literately could program the computer to do things I wanted it to do for me... wow! that was the time I knew that this was something I wanted to do, not only as a hobby, but as far as I was concerned for the rest of my life.
Later on, in university one of the persons that influenced me the most was a professor I had for the algoritmhs & Datastructures course. He really was and still is passionate about what he was teaching, and it is because of him that I got really interested in the more advanced items of software engineering.
Now that I think of it, it really is a chain of people that helped move me in this direction.. something I can't thank them enough for!
During one of my early jobs, I met an professor. He didn't do much other than giving me a list of books to read. This way he introduced me to valuable ideas like design patterns, state machine based UIs. Since he had the role of "Chief Architect", he could also leverage some time from the project manager to let me play with Java's Invocation API, integrating the original Sun VM into an embedded project etc. - stuff that was utterly useless to the commercial project I was working on, but very valueable to me.
I never had a formal education in computer science and at that point was little more than a self thought C hacker. What I already had was the ability to teach myself given the right sources (primarily books, as this was the early 90's). He just watched and ocationally pointed me into the right direction. In my opinion this is what great teachers should do. Watch and guide. Everything else has to come from you.
Bart De Smet for me. He taught me how to program in high school. He was always willing to help, no matter how silly my problems must have been to him.
Probably my freshman CS prof. If it wasn't for him and his infectuous enthusiasm, I might be an actuary right now...
He was leading up to the algorithm for a level-order traversal of a binary tree, querying the audience frequently to see if someone could jump to the solution. I saw it and I was so excited. First algorithm I ever thought up... and it hooked me :)