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by wegs 1955 days ago
It ebbs and flows. There was a low point in the late nineties and early 2000's:

* Windows 95 removed all thought of the user as a programmer, killing things like QBasic.

* Apple was doing likewise, even killing Hypercard.

* The web wasn't in its prime yet, limited to HTML 2.0 and 3.2, and really lousy JavaScript.

* Even electronics was tough, since DIP parts were being replaced with SMT, and the service manual was starting to become a relic, but things like Arduino and RPi didn't exist yet, and making PCBs was $$$$$.

* Shop classes were on the decline in schools, but makerspaces weren't in yet.

I feel bad for kids growing up then. Short of installing a Linux distribution, kids were left out in the cold for being anything other than consumers of technology.

There was really a golden age in the eighties and early nineties, and we seem to be in another golden age right now.