As a ZX Spectrum veteran the only things I really missed - in the sense that they made my bigger programs unwieldy - were precisely those cited in the first par

As a ZX Spectrum veteran the only things I really missed - in the sense that they made my bigger programs unwieldy - were precisely those cited in the first paragraph, viz calling subroutines by name rather than line number, and parameter passing. Oh yes and an Else statement. Of course those snooty BBC Micro kids had all that IIRC. The Spectrum community was fantastic in those days - in addition to a plethora of magazines there was the "ZX Spectrum ROM disassembly" (which I still possess) that gave an annotated listing of the whole 16K ROM; basic interpreter, fp calculator, cassette tape routines, the lot; an absolute goldmine. So an entire ecosystem that basically screamed "program me!". A beautiful time.