I was a young child in the 80s and used to type in BASIC programs from magazines into my C64 to play games. I learned programming by editing the code after I was done to see what happened differently. Compared to today, computers were both more integrated with “real life” – programs could come on a variety of physical media such as magazines and audio tapes, things intended for other purposes entirely – and more separated – computers felt like an escape from the real world. Today is rather the opposite! The lengths I go to stay in the real world to escape the online anxiety machine!
This article on illegally manufacturing ZX Spectrum clones in communist Romania, somehow, tickled my nostalgia for that time:
I still have some Commodores and VIC-20s laying around I’ve been meaning to setup and do something with, again…