[BjoernKW]

There were machines like the Commodore C64 - and later to some extent the Amiga as well - that more fully embraced and valued computing in that they booted into an environment which allowed you to create programs right away.

With the C64 in particular there was no real distinction between the operating system and the programming language, the programming language actually WAS the operating system. The machine booted into an empty canvas for you to create something with.

I still find that idea fascinating. Absurdly enough, the closest we've come to this again afterwards is Microsoft Excel. A spreadsheet application today is the closest general purpose computing equivalent to 'an empty canvas everyone can use to create something with right away'.

[Joeri]

Arguably modern windows has more programming abilities preinstalled with the OS: batch scripting, powershell, javascript (command line and browser), and C# (csc.exe compiler).

The difference is one of visibility and discoverability. The 70's and 80's were the time when user equated to programmer, mostly by technical necessity. The separation between those two concepts came later, and it's evidenced by the way modern windows hides the programming languages it bundles.

[Nition]

My memory on this is super vague because this was way back in the mists of time, but I think some old versions of DOS used to have a BASIC interpreter built in, where you could just start writing BASIC code at the DOS prompt.

[mbroncano]

QBasic was included in some of the later DOS versions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic

[TazeTSchnitzel]

There were IBM PCs with BASIC in ROM.

[khedoros1]

Some versions of DOS had a QBasic interpreter included as a utility. I stumbled upon it by accident when I was about 10 years old.

[GeekyBear]

Hypercard and later Visual Basic (to a lesser extent) made programing GUI based applications something mere mortals could do.