The kids who loved computers were the ones plugging in line after line of BASIC. Well, them and the ones who just really loved games. Games were a gateway drug for a lot of kids because for so long games could really make you work for it. Games had kids making changes to config.sys and setting BLASTER environment variables, connecting to a BBS or FTP sites for downloads, and troubleshooting network issues to get LAN games running with friends. You could get pretty good at computers just getting your fix. That took a pretty strong commitment though because if all you cared about were games, and if you had them, consoles made gaming very simple. Too simple if you valued the sense of learning and accomplishment that came from winning a wrestling match with an unforgiving computer keeping you from the game you wanted to play.

Yeah, I did that too. That's what you did with these machines. Deeply unsatisfying! Like: a real lesson in how gnarly real computers actually were. This is my point. You got one of these thingies and thought you could do anything, but it turns out "anything" took on values ranging from "hours to many hours of typing in BASIC listings and then working through inscrutable errors until something showed up on the screen but then crashed". Computers sucked ass!

Until like a year ago.