Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

The reality is the time for tinkering and stuff is over (for pc workloads, you can tinker all you like with hardware/agri/space/radio/nuclear open-source). Computers, whether they are on your lap or in your pocket, are being controlled by big corporations. You might say "But, Linux isn't controlled by a big corporation" and you'd be wrong. All these big tech companies want to wall you into their garden to shake you down anytime they want more capital.

The best way to get that 80s tinkering feeling again is to go get a Raspberry Pi or something and start building your own thing. Don't expect any of the consumer tech to ever cater to that kind of crowd again. They may pay homage to their roots but their bottom line depends on you forking over cash on their services and app stores.

Yes, computers at that time stsrted with a Basic prompt... because there was no appstore, and (at the start) very little in terms of apps. You were supposed to program it yourself (even by tediously copying listings from magazines) and, especially for the early generation products, storage was either very finicky (cassette tapes) or quite expensive (floppy).

In the same years, consoles also started to become a real product, like Atari 2600, Colecovision etc.

Guess what? Consoles did not start up with Basic or Assembly... because you were supposed to use cartridges to play something that had been programmed by a guy working for a company.

So I would argue that personal computers were built and sold (at least at the very start) for people who had a background in electronics and/or an interest in programming. Visicalc changed this almost overnight because after that computers became "interesting" for small business... and this in turn created a market for word processors, small inventory management systems and so on. But also a big push to make "serious" computers (CP/M) that could fit the format/size/price of Apple and TSR-80.

What I am trying to argue here is that PC were at the start mostly intended as educational devices, because there was very little in terms of shrinkwrapped sw to sustain other business cases. And if you just wanted something for your children to play with, you would buy an Atari at a fraction of the price of a Commodore PET or Apple.

Smartphones were always sold as "communication device first" and also the business infrastructure to almost immediately create a large portfolio of apps was already in place (if you remember the original idea for iPhones was not to develop for iOS but just create webapps).

TL;DR: If you bought an Apple at the end of the 70s you absolutely needed a Basic interpreter or it would have been just a very expensive paperweight. If you bought an iPhone in 2007 you wouldn't need to write your own software to get any use out of it.