"I think the limitations are not main reason why these 8-bit computers produced many good programmers. It's the fact that they booted straight to BASIC. In many

"I think the limitations are not main reason why these 8-bit computers produced many good programmers. It's the fact that they booted straight to BASIC. In many cases, that was all you had. That invited people to start experimenting." More than half the kids I knew who had computers growing up just used them to play games - there was no experimenting with BASIC or anything else. It was a games console with a keyboard - that was it. OF those who did program, I think many were forced in to getting 'better' because of the limitations. You generally couldn't say "just add another meg of ram to run this" - there really was only one configuration in many cases - you had to think of interesting ways to compact more info in to a program (compression, page out to disk, etc). Yes, having a programming environment as the first thing you're greeted with probably did get many people involved, but the limitations also produced a mindset amongst many devs of learning how to do more with less.