[jamesgill]

"Then it professionalised."

Yeah. It's not that it wasn't 'professionalized' back in the day, it's that everything has changed--the attitude, the people involved, the kinds of businesses there are, the philosophy. There was a...mystery about it, a feeling like you were entering a different world and that world was a place where you were close the the machine and...I just can't describe it. It was more visceral.

I made my first BASIC program in the late 70s on a Decwriter, which was basically a wide-carriage printer with a keyboard, attached via acoustic modem to a time-sharing system. And it was the best thing ever.