From time to time I watch Jim Butterfield's Commodore 64 tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9WnHuGjZ38 and I think just things were much easier

computers now are more like magic, nobody knows where your files are, or which programs you own or where they are even running.

It's not an unusual age to get into computers now. It's an unusual subject though! Back in the 8 bit days you didn't have the option of writing 3D games and websites and apps and so on.

We had very crude 3D, Elite and Starglider style, and BBS instead.

Dylan Cuthbert once argued that machine code is easier for younger minds because each instruction is less abstract.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/machine-code-is-for-kids-artic...

I agree, though I don't think that core x86 (especially in real mode) is as bad as he seems to think - it started out as a 16-bit extension to the 8080 after all, and can be used that way.

Low-level computing is even more amazing when you learn how to decode and execute simple instructions with a few logic gates.

Beyond that is in many ways a matter of interfacing and scale (at which point abstraction layers can be very useful.)