> "But it booted straight into BASIC. That’s all it did. I was, like, 8 years old. I wasn’t about to learn BASIC. What I learned instead: computers were not as awesome as I’d imagined."
You were the exception. Most kids felt awe. We started learning BASIC and creating "dumb games". That's the origin story of most people my age who ended up in this doomed industry.
Your priors are all out of whack. Most people never learned BASIC, let alone at 8. Programming is much more accessible now than then, but the overwhelming majority of people still don’t know any JavaScript or python or anything else.
Programming (by humans) is less accessible in 2026 because most personal computing devices don't boot into a programming environment and they don't include a user-friendly programming instruction manual (graphing calculators may be an exception however). And before the era of "there's an app for that" it was assumed that users would need to write their own programs, so systems were designed to support that. Vibe programming (by LLMs) is more accessible now however.
BASIC was designed as a simplified, interactive version of FORTRAN that non-experts could learn in an afternoon, but which was still powerful enough for a wide range of applications including numerical methods, simulations, data processing, and games. It was also small enough to implement effectively on a timeshared minicomputer or an 8-bit microcomputer.
Even though the Mac was GUI-based, for a time it shipped with, and promoted, HyperCard, which led to a brief explosion of user-created programs developed as HyperCard stacks.
>most personal computing devices don't boot into a programming environment
Yes, but now everyone and their mum has a personal computing device, and there's tutorials readily accessible, and five seconds of googling can bring you to an online programming environment.
All true, but the onramp isn't included in the box. When you get a smartphone, how do you know that you could even program it? Is there any encouragement to do so vs. just buying apps? They are more like game consoles, in more ways than one.
As I mentioned, I think graphing calculators might be an exception.
In the mid 80s, something like 10% of US households had any computer at all. That the onramp is in the box doesn't really matter to the people who never saw the box.
I guess the question is how you measure accessibility - per device, or across the population as a whole? In 2026 several billion people have personal computing devices, but the devices no longer provide that programming onramp. Interestingly enough, it looks like ~25% of the world's population is still offline.
meredithbloom · · focus · HN ↗
You were the exception. Most kids felt awe. We started learning BASIC and creating "dumb games". That's the origin story of most people my age who ended up in this doomed industry.
thfuran · · focus · HN ↗
musicale · · focus · HN ↗
BASIC was designed as a simplified, interactive version of FORTRAN that non-experts could learn in an afternoon, but which was still powerful enough for a wide range of applications including numerical methods, simulations, data processing, and games. It was also small enough to implement effectively on a timeshared minicomputer or an 8-bit microcomputer.
Even though the Mac was GUI-based, for a time it shipped with, and promoted, HyperCard, which led to a brief explosion of user-created programs developed as HyperCard stacks.
thfuran · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, but now everyone and their mum has a personal computing device, and there's tutorials readily accessible, and five seconds of googling can bring you to an online programming environment.
musicale · · focus · HN ↗
As I mentioned, I think graphing calculators might be an exception.
thfuran · · focus · HN ↗
musicale · · focus · HN ↗