> Is the opportunity for this type of magic still available? Totally! The landscape was/is definitely different since there have been so many abstraction layer

> Is the opportunity for this type of magic still available? Totally! The landscape was/is definitely different since there have been so many abstraction layers placed on top of the hardware, but even web programming is a fun first experience that creates that “woah I made that happen??” feeling. Personally my first real exposure to programming was playing with Atmel microcontrollers after watching some youtube tutorials and writing video game cheats after seeing a friend use one and wondering how the heck it worked. There was a lot of stuff to figure out, but each time you conquer some new detail of the overall system you’re immediately hungry for more. It’s actually assuring to hear folks older than myself ask these questions, because I find myself looking at the increasingly locked down computing tech of today and wonder new folks are going to get into this wonderful hobby if there’s no ability to mess around with it.