[mrwh]

Lots of interesting replies here. I'd question the premise though. At least where I grew up, programming was a niche interest. Plenty of people I knew had Amigas and Atari STs; very few had any interest in programming them. It wouldn't surprise me that just as a small proportion of people back then did learn to write their own programs (or tried to), a similar proportion today are delving into XCode and Android Studio - and Unity and all the rest, and doing so for free, with a wealth of tutorials.