Comment by iso1631

In that area, kids with computers that booted straight to basic like the spectrum, bbc micro, c64 etc fell into two camps -- those who were interested, and those whose parents were interested. I suspect the former were more numerous, as to have a parent interested enough to spend a fortune on a computer without the pester power of the kid feels quite niche.

The vast majority of kids never touched computers, other than maybe running logo at school to move a turtle around.

Most kids who were only interested in a game had a NES or Sega console.

Of the former group, the awe began when you wrote in the example program from the manual or magazine, made it do something, and then changed it. Even something as simple as changing from 3 lives to 99.