The Spectrum (and ZX81) had a big effect on a whole generation of Brits. I know my folks could not have afforded a C64 or BBC Micro but they did manage fifty quid in Currys to start my lifetime of coding.
Likewise. At the time my folks could just about stretch to a ZX81 plus 16k RAM Pack[0], but not a wobble stopper[1] - so we fashioned one out of corrugated cardboard and gaffer tape. A few years later I scored an upgrade to the ZX Spectrum+ which was an absolute revelation - what with stuff like colour and sound.
I learnt BASIC through typing out listings from ZX Computing Monthly, Sinclair User, Your Sinclair, and others, borrowed from the local library. I forget the name of the magazines which had multi-platform listings, for the Electron and Vic-20 and MSX and others.
i was fortunate enough to have access to a bbc-micro (acorn) machine while growing up. and spent many a pleasant evenings programming 2d function plots, with zoom and scale, taylor series expansion of trigonometric functions, learning about matrix multiplication, solving small simultaneous equations using gauss-jordan...at some point in time i just stopped studying any ‘fundamental’ subject f.e physics/maths/chemistry much to the annoyance of my parents so much so that i was banned from using the machine. but guess what, i continued writing programs on notebooks by hand, and would run sims to trace their execution...to say that i was obsessed would be such an understatement. i think i was intoxicated on the whole thing... :)
I learnt BASIC through typing out listings from ZX Computing Monthly, Sinclair User, Your Sinclair, and others, borrowed from the local library. I forget the name of the magazines which had multi-platform listings, for the Electron and Vic-20 and MSX and others.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_pack [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110614170203/http://www.sincus...