Growing up in eastern Europe in the 80's, I learned to program in Basic on a "Pravetz 82" - an almost exact replica of the Apple II in all but name, except ever

Growing up in eastern Europe in the 80's, I learned to program in Basic on a "Pravetz 82" - an almost exact replica of the Apple II in all but name, except every single component and material used was manufactured in Bulgaria from scratch. Communists were firmly convinced that they've actually done a better job than the capitalist pigs at Apple and even self credited themselves with the invention of personal computing. It was a wildly successful product throughout the whole eastern bloc. It was accompanied by a whole ecosystem of home-made software, games, peripherals, robotics kits, literature, magazines, and was very popular in the educational systems of nearby countries. A good portion of the brightest software engineers to come out of eastern Europe made their baby steps in programming on this gem [1] I have very fond memories of it. 1. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-ii-clones-helped-shape-central-europes-it-sector/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-...