[potatolicious]

> "didn't have to buy anything extra; you could tinker with your main computer"

You realize that mass adoption of the "home computer" is a very, very recent phenomenon, right? I grew up with a computer in the late 80s/early 90s because my father was in the field, but most of my neighbours did not start getting computers until the mid 90s. IMHO the image of the precocious youngster learning to hack on the machine his family just happened to have is a bit of selection bias.

People look back at the wonderful days of the 70s and 80s with rose tinted glasses - the truth of the matter is back then computers were exclusively hacking machines (i.e., you couldn't work them at all without some fairly in-depth knowledge), you did buy them just to hack on it.

[bd]

A lot of people grew up in 80s with computers used primarily for games. I was a kid in glory days of 8-bit computers (Atari, Commodore, Sinclair). There were many many millions sold of those.

So yes, many precocious youngsters of my generation learned to hack just because they happened to have computer (bought for non-hacking purpose) and it was tempting and possible to tinker.

[blhack]

People had these computers for reasons other than to tinker. The example given in TFS is about a dad using a machine as a wordprocessor. I have an arduino board because I grew up tinkering and the arduino lets me relive the late nights spent up learning, but they are not something that anybody who isn't already a tinkerer will buy.