I too had a TI994a but besides getting some good TI Basic programming in, I never really appreciated the thing.  I was forced to use the thing as my sole gaming device for a long time, and there were some decent games.  TI Invaders, TI Toad, Pole Position...  I would have been much happier with a C64 or simply game consoles.
 
I made a lot of text adventures on the thing, some of them pretty elaborate.  It taught me a lot of good early lessons about computers.
 
But actually in the 80's I did dream of being a programmer.  I even thought of working at Nintendo.  By the 90's I realized I wasn't a huge fan of math and intelligently naming variables and making notes in source code seemed like an incredibly annoying aspect of C++ programming.  I think if I had picked the programmer path I'd be over my head and depressed right now.