[arethuza]

I'd have said the Golden Age started about the time Linux distros allowed you replicate the full Unix workstation experience on a basic PC - which I think in my case was around '93 or '94 - right around the same time as the Web starting to become a standard technology.

[freedomben]

Agreed, and importantly the increasing availabilty of open source compilers/interpreters that made it possible for the broke kid to sling real code.

[TheNewsIsHere]

It wasn’t just programming either. It was anything with computing. I remember when you could walk into a book store and find a wall of books on Linux, so many of which came with “the Publisher’s Edition” of a Linux distro. That’s how I learned (and obtained!) Linux for the first time. I was hooked.

Where else was a kid going to get a full Linux suite (with just a dial up connection) and a sound basic education for it, in 2003?

I never quite took that for granted, but I still miss being able to walk into a bookstore and walk out with a book with software included. There was something really special about that.