> Historically a good Windows computer cost $1000 and it was all it took to start programming

Started with computers around 2009 and later bought an oldish computer (a pentium 4 PC) for the equivalent of 50 usd. Codeblocks and Python Idle were free at the time (C and Python were the first languages I learned). The barrier to programming has always been low as the only thing you needed was books (the internet made things easier) and access to a PC (I had friends with laptop and my school lab).