[idolaspecus]

It’s about a million times easier today. Open a browser, open dev tools, open console tab, console.log(“hello world”).

It’s even easier than that though.

Open chrome, type “how to write computer programs” and go from there.

[Sindisil]

Not sure how that's easier than: Turn computer (which boots close to instantly), print "hello world".

It is certainly true that there are more informational resources available, but honestly, there was plenty of good info available at most decent libraries, and the manuals that came with computers were typically troves of information back in the 8-bit days.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Yeah, people forget (or just never experienced) how easy it was to learn something like Delphi pre-Internet: the software box had good manuals and you just hit F1 for context-sensitive help that was actually useful.

[evan_]

computers don't need to boot "close to instantly" because nobody ever turns them off now. The "open browser" step in the previous comment is probably a noop because who even closes their browsers?