&gt; Time sharing and the obligation not to break &quot;the family computer&quot; make it pretty useless as a tinkering platform, unless your parents are technical and comfortable with it.<p>I follow the logic here, and intuitively agree, but anecdotally it was almost the exact opposite experience that started my interest in computers.<p>We got a computer mainly to help with personal accounting type things. Beyond what my mother knew of Excel, my parents were not at all technically savvy. Probably because of this (that is, that they didn&#x27;t know how to restrict&#x2F;follow what I was messing with) they gave me relatively free reign to tinker on our family computer from the age of about 8 on. After a few years I just fell into the de facto IT of the house.<p>I wonder if the problem now is that computers are used for so much more by adults? As long as I could fix&#x2F;hide whatever I broke before my parents needed to update their budget or check their email, hardly even a daily ritual at the time, I was in the clear.