[dagw]

Programming is much much easier now than it was in the 80s!

Certainly true in many respects. However I don't think learning programming is much easier now than it was in the 80s.

[exDM69]

I disagree, now we have tons of free internet resources available.

Back then I had to bicycle to the library to borrow a book, and hope that the accompanying diskette with the compiler in it was still working.

Programming is still programming. Maybe becoming a professional software engineer is harder, though.

[Firadeoclus]

> I disagree, now we have tons of free internet resources available.

An abundance of choice can actually make things harder.

[exDM69]

Abundance of choice makes things harder for sure.

But overall it's so much easier these days. Even if you're spoiled for choice, you can get the tools and documentation for free. Back then it was either the BASIC interpreter that shipped with your computer (QBASIC for me) or the assembler (debug.com) or paying big bucks to buy a compiler. I was lucky that my dad could obtain a PASCAL and a C compiler through his work.

These days you might have too much choice but back then for a kid like me, the choice was what was available in the local library. So not much choice at all.

[pjmlp]

On southern Europe there was also other option, (cough) street markets.

[tmzt]

I think the point is nickleodeon.com and disney.com are just as easy to visit as github, Netflix is more likely to be on a kids tablet than Scratch.

[renox]

Maybe but because books were scarce 'back in the days' didn't mean that they were high quality either..

[pjmlp]

Yes, however we would value as gold those books, because they were the only source to the knowledge of the machine.

It was also what made demoscene competitions so interesting, there wasn't a web page explaining how to pull off those tricks.

It was curiosity and reading between the lines of those books that spiked out the curiosity to try out such tricks.