I read a book called A People's History of Computing in the United States, which wildly oversells itself, it's just a history of Dartmouth Basic and the culture

I read a book called A People's History of Computing in the United States, which wildly oversells itself, it's just a history of Dartmouth Basic and the culture surrounding it. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674970977 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674970977 But even then it was very interesting! The philosophy was that anyone could program, and they really did build a culture of amateurs writing programs that answered their own needs. The author has access to a lot of ephemera from that time which gives some flavor of what it was like in the lab. And then, BASIC culture spread by unlikely methods, like the Pillsbury Dough company. No, really. For whatever reason they got involved allowing local schools in the midwest to time-share with their big mainframes.