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I agree there was a generation who had to wait for timesharing, but there were something like six million Apple IIs and twelve million Commodore 64s out there (
by erik_seaberg 4y ago
I agree there was a generation who had to wait for timesharing, but there were something like six million Apple IIs and twelve million Commodore 64s out there (counting mine) by the mid-80s, and users who filtered into the profession had different motivations than the people who grew up on stories of dot-com IPO millionaires.
- lapcat 4y agoI think you're missing the point, which is that the earlier generation of programmers did just fine without being 13 year old hackers, and still created incredible software. How many of those Apple IIs and C64s were actually used for non-trivial, proto-professional programming by 13 year olds? Certainly not millions.