[K0balt]

To be sure, the barrier to entry on professional level development is higher, but we also have chip-8, python, arduino, and other languages and systems that are arguably much more approachable than BASIC with a line only editor.

Many commenters have pointed out that it was always a tiny fraction of people that could do this kind of thing, and I think that’s probably true, in retrospect. My ideas about the subject are probably colored by the fact that it always seemed easy to me, and I assumed (at the time) that others would also find it easy because I hadn’t come to grips with the bell curve yet. But if I think critically, there was basically no one I knew that was doing anything more ambitious than typing in games from magazines at that time…. So perhaps my worries about the dumbing down of society are overblown?

After all, it’s not like no one is graduating high school or something.