In 6th grade there were Apple II's at school I was part of a group of honors kids that got to code BASIC on Apple II's. I made a Tron disc game, it wasn't good

In 6th grade there were Apple II's at school I was part of a group of honors kids that got to code BASIC on Apple II's. I made a Tron disc game, it wasn't good but the ability to create a game, render block graphics using text and code BASIC was magic. My friend also had a Commodore 64 which even to start a game you had to know some commands (LOAD "$", 8, LIST, then LOAD your game). Computing and coding/interfacing with the computer was more involved but simple as well, led to lots of fun learning to code and create. Between these two machines (Apple II and Comodore 64) I fell in love with coding and games. I never had an Amiga which was a bummer but these were enough to inspire kids to be creators with code. In high school my teacher Mr Isles was big into the internet and media computers, we were watching TV on a computer, playing games like Scorched Earth, making games in pascal while browsing the web, it was amazing and moving fast. Flash had the same fun factor as those in late 90s to around 2006-ish before the mobile phone came out. Flash communities were very special in both designers and developers, it was powerful that either type of aim could create games, interactives, experiences and Amiga like demo scenes. Even when mobile truly arrived in 2007 when the iPhone and smartphones upped the game, I was blown away when OpenGL was on it and I knew immediately that it was a new handheld gaming market that I had to get into. Mobile existed at that point and I was making games on Windows Mobile but everything changed with iPhone/Android in mobile in the ability to create. That fun creation market is still going on today, now we are onto fun interactive tools like augmented reality and location based games which are fun. There are really inspiring innovations happening all the time in each generation but it does seem like the fun platforms and really interesting ones are led by gaming, or apps today, and areas approachable by designers and developers alike to create interesting games, apps, interactives and the platform makes it fun. I think it is really important for platform designers/developers to make their platform approachable, simple and reduce complexity so that it can attract people interested in creating. I think an engineers job is to create simplicity from complexity, design platforms smartly with senior skill for the junior, in some areas today we are failing that due to heavily specialization. Every truly successful platform that really hit and progressed innovation/creation forward did exactly that.