What do mean? The Commodore 64 shipped with BASIC. Even the cheap VIC-20 had it. And both machines had a real keyboard, making programming much easier than with the PET and its squashed, square keys.

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amichail 7 hours ago | parent [-]

But the fancy graphics and sound were a distraction for hobby programmers. Not only did you need difficult low level programming to make the best of them, but they also enabled distracting games made by others that kept you from programming more.

	▲	JohnFen 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those "distracting games" often were what brought people into programming in the first place. If they didn't exist, a whole lot of top-notch programmers would never have entered the field.