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.