I think the more modern equivalent would be making games with various javascript game engines (twine, etc) in a web browser or similar and making art with medib

I think the more modern equivalent would be making games with various javascript game engines (twine, etc) in a web browser or similar and making art with medibang paint and so on. Then there is the entire linus tech tips make a cool RGB flashy gamer computer and poke at shit, where those kind of tech youtubers make get a million views per video. Or buy a rasberry pi at 13 and poke at linux on the internet. You have to realize, that even back then, only %0.5 of a school population is going to be into computers enough to install linux on anything. At my small high school, I was the only one basically.