Floppy drives weren't that uncommon. Or even those horrible audio cassette tape systems. It depends a bit on the era I guess. If you're talking mid 70s Altair type computers then compiling a program practically required access to someone with an EE degree. By the late 70s though you're looking at stuff like the Apple II and the Commodore 64 which were usually sold with some sort of mass storage option.

Only knowing BASIC wasn't nearly the handicap it would become either. Most people were in the same boat.

As for the price, that's true of everything computer related in the 80s. If you were buying a computer in the first place you were more likely to be able to scrounge together a couple hundred more bucks for the disk drive and printer.