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Sure, but none of that prevented you from creating and inventing and just having fun. It was an exciting time because microprocessors had just appeared and it w

Sure, but none of that prevented you from creating and inventing and just having fun. It was an exciting time because microprocessors had just appeared and it wasn't yet clear what all might be done with them. People did amazing things with those 8 bit processors - do you think Woz and Gates were just dinking around? If you were interested in computing it wasn't so hard to get yourself to a company or school that would provide access. They didn't stop you from creating and inventing. Nowadays computing is more dominated by a few large companies and institutions than it was then. Do you really own, control, understand, and trust your phone and other gadgets as well as they did then with their 8 bit processors?

kazinator 7y ago
Woz and Jobs quit decent jobs and had to sell belongings to fund their project. Gates had access to mainframe computers capable of running an emulator of the 8 bit systems he was targeting, using which he was able to debug his BASIC interpreters. > If you were interested in computing it wasn't so hard to get yourself to a company or school that would provide access. And as for the rest, why they could just get a terminal with a 110 baud acoustically-coupled modem and try their luck breaking in. Nobody was going to let you near equipment costing 100K's of dollars, without credentials, and even then, it would have been be difficult to use the equipment for hobby projects.