Before I got my first computer I read in some book about the first ever chess program that was written to be executed by a room full of people. Hey I thought, no money, but I do have paper, pencils and time. So one sheet became my 'variables', the other my program and I would run my BASIC programs without so much as a keyboard to touch.

That's not the fastest way to run your programs but things like 'guess a number' are definitely doable.

Shortly after that I got a Saturday job at a local radio shack which gave me access to the real thing.

So it's not necessary to have access to computer hardware at all to learn about programming, even though it certainly helps.