> But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s What was the reach of those magazines? When I was young I was the only one in my high school

> But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s What was the reach of those magazines? When I was young I was the only one in my high school class with a computer. There was some self-selection going on. Today, with $300 (inflated dollars, so much cheaper than in the past) you can get a very nice laptop and program your heart away if you so want. Those people who would have read those magazines are now on various internet programming/forums, hacking minecraft. It's only the magazines which disappeared because now there are better ways to disseminate technical info. The absolute numbers of hackers probably remained similar, it's just that now there are a ton more computer users, so they get diluted.