I think the people that first encountered computers when they were relatively simple and constrained have a huge advantage over the rest of us.
Even if they were simple it was hard to program them because there was a very limited amount of information on how to do it. The few books available didn't cover a lot of things. Learning was mostly done lots of things until you succeeded. And that took a lot of time and patience. The Internet, stackoverflow, Reddit, YouTube, forums, Udemy, Github, and the thousands of tutorials, examples and documentation site make things a lot easier.
I started to learn programming on an 8 bit Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the only good things that came out of that is that it teached me to work on very constrained systems and to build up patience and will to try and fail until I succeed.
4 or 5 years later when I've experienced IBM PCs at school, it felt like going from horse and carriage to a rocket. Yes, the rocket might be a bit harder to maneuver but you can do much more things, faster.
The manuals that came with the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 were excellent; they gave a good foundation for learning BASIC, and teased you into getting into lower-level machine code. And once you got to that point, the Reference Manual really go you to very low level detail.
Comments
Even if they were simple it was hard to program them because there was a very limited amount of information on how to do it. The few books available didn't cover a lot of things. Learning was mostly done lots of things until you succeeded. And that took a lot of time and patience. The Internet, stackoverflow, Reddit, YouTube, forums, Udemy, Github, and the thousands of tutorials, examples and documentation site make things a lot easier.
I started to learn programming on an 8 bit Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the only good things that came out of that is that it teached me to work on very constrained systems and to build up patience and will to try and fail until I succeed.
4 or 5 years later when I've experienced IBM PCs at school, it felt like going from horse and carriage to a rocket. Yes, the rocket might be a bit harder to maneuver but you can do much more things, faster.
The manuals that came with the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 were excellent; they gave a good foundation for learning BASIC, and teased you into getting into lower-level machine code. And once you got to that point, the Reference Manual really go you to very low level detail.
https://archive.org/details/Personal_Computing_On_The_VIC-20... https://archive.org/details/VIC-20_Programmers_Reference_Gui...
Easier after you fight through hours of fruitless configuration and version differences.