I've worked with quite a number of former Soviet block programmers, and a common story I heard was how limited access to actual computers meant they had to writ

I've worked with quite a number of former Soviet block programmers, and a common story I heard was how limited access to actual computers meant they had to write their programs out and hand validate them so that when they got their actual time-slice on the real thing, the program ran the first time. Almost every one of them was a very, very good programmer.