This is a little bit like the early home computers. You could start writing code (basic) immediately after switching on the computer. Copy a few lines of code from magazine and see what it does.
The manual that came with the Apple IIc my family had when I was a kid included sections on programming the computer with Applesoft BASIC. What an optimistic thing to include in the manual that every user gets! And, yet, those were the first lines of code I ever typed into a computer and I'm still doing it 30 years later.
I remember small sections of BASIC in my school math book in something like 6th grade. We had a Mac with HyperCard so it looked really primitive to me :)
Yep. When I was a kid I had to type my games in from an Usbourne book. It was, in the long run, a hell of a lot better than a console and cartridges would have been.
