Oh, and if the author thought that modding Half-Life by changing a couple images around was creative freedom, his mind will be blown by 80s home computers, which booted directly into BASIC. Growing up, I learned that a computer is to be programmed as a pencil is to be written with, from machines whose first act upon power-on was to cry out to be programmed. Since 32-bit Windows, computers haven't even shipped with BASIC in a meaningful sense. Computing, for most people, boiled down to "using applications"—word processor, spreadsheet, browser. We've only just dumbed these down even more, including shortening the term to "apps".

A favorite video of mine to share is this Learn how to program your computer (1977):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZRyVxnJTh4

It "booted" into an IDE before you could turn on the monitor (sold separately). You were programming within 15 minutes--you had to be, there was nothing else to do.