I think it depends on your definition of programming; the technology to build complex systems has undoubtedly improved, however the bar for hobbyists and learners is now sadly far higher than it was in the eighties, when almost anyone with a home computer could knock up a fun little game in BASIC as per the article. What could we recommend to the eager youngster for this sort of stuff today? JS + HTML canvas? Pygame? Not even in the same league of approachability sadly.
however the bar for hobbyists and learners is now sadly far higher than it was in the eighties
I mean, the initial friction of getting to hello world is higher than with boot-to-BASIC systems, but the marginal friction for anything beyond that is vastly lower.
The bigger deal is that almost any common need has readily available free adequate solutions; there's far less for a hobbyist to do that feels like a payoff compared to easy-to-find, free, off-the-shelf software. There's less magic.
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I think it depends on your definition of programming; the technology to build complex systems has undoubtedly improved, however the bar for hobbyists and learners is now sadly far higher than it was in the eighties, when almost anyone with a home computer could knock up a fun little game in BASIC as per the article. What could we recommend to the eager youngster for this sort of stuff today? JS + HTML canvas? Pygame? Not even in the same league of approachability sadly.
I mean, the initial friction of getting to hello world is higher than with boot-to-BASIC systems, but the marginal friction for anything beyond that is vastly lower.
The bigger deal is that almost any common need has readily available free adequate solutions; there's far less for a hobbyist to do that feels like a payoff compared to easy-to-find, free, off-the-shelf software. There's less magic.