the fact that if you POKE some address and the screen changes color doesn't tell you anything about how it all happened.
Simply typing in a PEEK or a POKE may not have told you much about how it happened, but peel back that one layer and you are learning about how memory is organized, hardware registers, and other low level fun. Peel that back another layer and you are starting to learn about EE.
Contrast that to today. Chances are that you are going to have to peel back several layers before you even bump into the OS kernel. Depending upon the language and the libraries, few of those layers will say anything meaningful about how the computer works. Things progress somewhat more rapidly after that, in the sense that each layer of abstraction will be more meaningful, but you will still have to peel back multiple layers before you touch hardware.
I don't think the article was saying that you automatically learned more about computers through the simplicity of older systems. I think they were saying that it was much more accessible to those who decided to do so.
Comments
Simply typing in a PEEK or a POKE may not have told you much about how it happened, but peel back that one layer and you are learning about how memory is organized, hardware registers, and other low level fun. Peel that back another layer and you are starting to learn about EE.
Contrast that to today. Chances are that you are going to have to peel back several layers before you even bump into the OS kernel. Depending upon the language and the libraries, few of those layers will say anything meaningful about how the computer works. Things progress somewhat more rapidly after that, in the sense that each layer of abstraction will be more meaningful, but you will still have to peel back multiple layers before you touch hardware.
I don't think the article was saying that you automatically learned more about computers through the simplicity of older systems. I think they were saying that it was much more accessible to those who decided to do so.