During my first semester of CS we were mostly using MatLab for basal scripting - assigning variables, learning about scope, that type of thing. I was excited to start learning programming but wanted to actually make something rather than reversing arrays and incrementing counters for weeks.

I discovered the image() function which takes a float[][] matrix and displays it as an image. I generated my arrays of random numbers and made a simple nested loop where I iterated over each element, averaging it with its neighbours, and - it worked on the first run! I made a freaking noise and blur filter!

That rush of planning it out, making it, and seeing it work I think is my main drive in coding. All the hours of undefined-but-they-are-tho import paths and mystery segfaults are worth it once there is that moment of "it lives!".