&#62; <i>"didn't have to buy anything extra; you could tinker with your main computer"</i><p>You realize that mass adoption of the "home computer" is a very, very recent phenomenon, right? I grew up with a computer in the late 80s/early 90s because my father was in the field, but most of my neighbours did not start getting computers until the mid 90s. IMHO the image of the precocious youngster learning to hack on the machine his family <i>just happened to have</i> is a bit of selection bias.<p>People look back at the wonderful days of the 70s and 80s with rose tinted glasses - the truth of the matter is back then computers were <i>exclusively</i> hacking machines (i.e., you couldn't work them at all without some fairly in-depth knowledge), you <i>did</i> buy them just to hack on it.