I have a theory that it's because computers are pushing coding stuff away. If you bought a personal computer in the 80s, you basically needed to learn how to pr

I have a theory that it's because computers are pushing coding stuff away. If you bought a personal computer in the 80s, you basically needed to learn how to program. The computer would come with a basic interpreter built in and easy to find. It would come with a thick dead tree manual on how to program it. Windows, as far as I know, doesn't come with any programming language built in. You can do some shell stuff or js in the browser, but you can't make an application with that (easily.) And that stuff is hidden away and not encouraged, you have to do research to find out it's even there. And mobile OSes are even more locked down. As mobile devices replace desktop computers for the vast majority of people, how are they ever supposed to get into programming? In some sense it is easier than ever to get into programming. Programming languages are better, the internet makes learning resources much more available, there's libraries that can do whatever obscure thing you want to do. But all this is hidden away in a secret world that most users will never venture into and don't know exists. I know this sounds like it shouldn't be a big deal, but I really believe it is. I was so intimidated by learning programming that I put it off for a long time. It seemed like it would be very complicated and difficult. When I did try to learn, I tried with C++. I also early on tried to program stuff with batch scripts and was put off by how limited it was. Eventually I tried another obscure proprietary language that I found through clicking on an ad. All of these were terrible choices for a beginner who wants to learn programming. But I didn't know enough to know they were terrible choices. If someone had installed python on my computer and showed me some simple examples I could play with, I would have been so much better off. Eventually I stumbled across a blog post showing how to open up the developer console on a browser just by pressing F12. And some simple example stuff in js. It's like an new world just opened up to me. I know some people that had a similar experience with the computercraft mod for minecraft, of all things.