I'm within months of my 60's, have been a developer since 1984, and Radio Shack is where it started. My family moved when I was 1/2 way through high school, of course in the Summer. So I had no network of friends, and wandered into a Radio Shack with the ubiquitous TRS-80 on display. Over the course of the summer, the 1 employee there and I became friends enough to where he'd boot up the BASIC interpreter, and let me type in programs.

That was my start. Went on to consume as much info as I could; lots of it from BYTE magazine, took all the programming classes I was allowed in my final 2 years of high school, continued to get a CS degree, and have been programming ever since.

But RS was the genesis.