The first I met
Wow, Jason, what a different experience here...
My contact with anything digital started the day I was given two boards based on the CD4017 damaged by careless soldering. It was supoosed to imitate the Big Ben.
Next step was to get a multimeter, and a RCA CMOS manual to understand what they were and how they worked,
I was astonished when somebody told me: "look if the clock (!!) works". What clock...?!
Two years later, in a 16 days voyage from Curaçao to Argentina (LPG carrier), I read in full the Ronald Zacks' manual on the Z80.
Then, the 8052 with that nice BASIC and later the PIC 16C57.
The 4017 seemed to be in every design requiring a clocked sequence when micros were not so common as today.