> It was imagined that programming would become easy enough that anyone could learn to do it.

Arguably LLMs take us further away from that than we've ever been. All they do is automate copying and pasting in shit from StackOverflow.

We were closer to everyone being able to learn how to program computers in the mid-80s when everyone had one and they started up with a BASIC prompt.

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chickensong 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah yes, the 80s, when everyone had a computer.

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ErroneousBosh 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, yeah. The home computer revolution.

Literally everyone had a ZX Spectrum, or Commodore 64, or a BBC Micro if their parents were rich and thought that having the same as they had at school was a good idea.

	▲	chickensong an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you change "literally everyone" to "a minority" we can agree.
	▲	adampunk an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		My house did not have a computer in it until 1992. I knew many people who did not have a computer in the house in the 1980s. Computers were expensive!