I often wonder how many people actually did any programming on those computers. For a very long time I assumed loads of people did - I did, my brothers and Dad

I often wonder how many people actually did any programming on those computers. For a very long time I assumed loads of people did - I did, my brothers and Dad did, my friends did. There were listings in magazines and books. It seemed wildly popular. But looking back now, and having met far more people from that era than I knew in my small town at the time, hardly anyone says they did too. They had computers but they used them for gaming and nothing much else. I was in a bubble, living in place where a major employer was a tech company. What reality was like outside seems to explain why programming was so appealing - it made me a bit special and opened a lot of doors back in the 90s. I suspect that, even now, including an IDE as a default app with a language compiler or interpreter would be a waste of space for most users. They wouldn't use it, and they'd complain about it taking up valuable photo and music storage.