When I was a kid we had 8bit micros. They were programmable but they were also eye wateringly expensive. So it was a struggle to own anything you could program at all.

Also they all came with closed source, proprietary OSs.

I used to spend a fair amount of time just starring at adverts for things I couldn’t afford and that would be obsolete before I could.

Now you can get a whole computer given away free on the front cover of a magazine and it will do a pretty good job of running scratch for you.