[tluyben2]

I think he is mixing 'valuable/marketable skill' and 'programming' with his 90s comparison; it wasn't hard to learn programming in the 90s. It wasn't even hard in (most of) the 80s. There were BBSs which contained a wealth of information, there were tons of (disk based) magazines and there were free tools.

Most likely you wouldn't be learning something marketable perse, however you would learn programming in the same time as you do now. Actually I think maybe even more efficient as there weren't the HN post distractions :) Your computer would most likely not be connected (all the time) and multitasking wasn't very nicely implemented or even possible, so your computer meant either running games/software made by others or full focus on tinkering with Basic, assembly or some of the other languages out there at the time.