When I started programming, we didn't even have programming languages. We had to train small animals like hedgehogs and muskrats to perform the operations. Some things were obvious: rabbits or mice (multipliers), certain species of snakes (adders), and the occasional repurposed flotsam (oar gates). But let me tell you, it takes a lot of training to consistently complement a hedgehog.
Then we'd line everything up along the road and run them through their paces in a kind of "relay race". It was much later that electromechanical relays were invented, but by then the term "relay computer" was already long established.
Maaaaaan, you're old
My first was Applesoft BASIC on an Apple ][. I believe my first program was something along the lines of:
10 PRINT "I CAN BEEP!"
20 PRINT CHR$(7)
30 GOTO 10
I ran it with great pride. Then my grade 4 computer teacher came by, thoroughly unimpressed, and said "Yes, dear, you can. Now turn it off."
She didn't recognize (potential) (future) greatness when she saw it.