Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first computer in 1977 that booted up into BASIC - Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor). It had 8k of memory, and I paid a whopping $400 for the 32k memory expansion module. The original PET cost me $800 used. My first game was a horse racing / betting game, reflecting my Mom and Dad's penchant for the ponies (OTB, you owe me big time ;) IIRC, I could only use graphics characters if all the letters were…
I saw a Commodore PET at that time in a local store. In school I then got access to a Commodore CBM 3032, which was a more robust model of the PET. It had a better keyboard, for example. Booted into BASIC, too.
When I look at the video of Kalman Reti running Symbolics Lisp Machine in an emulator [1], I am still blown away by how much more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing it was compared to my PET or the Apple ii. The difference seems almost asynchronous, like time-traveler tech.
How you could just drop in to any system library, or even the kernel, and use the same language, Lisp, to modify anything live is astounding. A lot of people have dismissed any talk of how great LISP Machines were as a bunch of nostalgia, but I don't think any of them have watched 15 minutes of somebody operating in that environment. You can't look at it, and keep a straight face when talking about how great the Apple ii was or the Lisa for that matter later on.