This post reminded me that Richard Stallman related something like this (an aside in [1], which is mostly about Lisp history from his point of view). > Multics

This post reminded me that Richard Stallman related something like this (an aside in [1], which is mostly about Lisp history from his point of view). > Multics Emacs proved to be a great success — programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to program. There's a similar phenomenon with Excel. People will put together amazing things with Excel formulas. Sometimes these things are effectively line-of-business applications. But it wouldn't even occur to them to call themselves programmers. They're just "good with Excel". Many others have also commented on the significance of the 8-bit TV computers booting to a BASIC interpreter rather than something to launch "apps" made by "developers", which I suspect was already part of your exploration. [1] https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html