[eesmith]

For a while I thought the same. Then I starting meeting more people from the generation before me, who complained about how the kids nowadays (meaning me and my generation) didn't really know how the machines worked. The kids only wrote code, but since they didn't build and maintain the hardware, they didn't grok the full stack.

And to be fair, they are right. There was a level of UART programming and video logic control that I never understood, because they required knowledge of analog circuitry that was beyond me.

As I grew older, I realize that every generation has people who that about the next one. Sure, car engines in my g'grandfather's day were so simple that anyone could take one apart and really learn how it works. But I prefer the benefits of modern engines.

BTW, the first real OSes were in the 1960s. I do not think you started with computers in the 1950s. And how is it that "all the code that was there was what you wrote (copied) yourself" when you were "dropped right into the interpreter"? - who wrote the code for the interpreter?