The geeks that looked forward to InCider, Nybble, and whatever the offshoot computer mag from 3-2-1 Contact were and typed BASIC programs in were the minority.
But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s, magazines not even oriented at "developers" but more "power users", you'll find huge chunks of content devoted to programming --- not just BASIC, but Asm (DOS's DEBUG command was the preferred method of creating small utilities), undocumented features, controlling hardware, and the like. Programming was viewed more as a progression/spectrum from novice -> power user -> programmer, with the result that a lot of users knew the basic concepts of how computers worked and would not have much trouble making little modifications to the Asm listings they found in order to customise them to their needs.
Contrast this with the locked-down walled-garden ecosystems where you can't even easily control the behaviour of, much less write programs for, on the device you bought!
> But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s
What was the reach of those magazines? When I was young I was the only one in my high school class with a computer. There was some self-selection going on.
Today, with $300 (inflated dollars, so much cheaper than in the past) you can get a very nice laptop and program your heart away if you so want.
Those people who would have read those magazines are now on various internet programming/forums, hacking minecraft. It's only the magazines which disappeared because now there are better ways to disseminate technical info. The absolute numbers of hackers probably remained similar, it's just that now there are a ton more computer users, so they get diluted.
My first experience programming on computers was o a demo version of VB4 (could not export .EXE), and later on JavaScript (copying and pasting things from the Internet).
Nowadays it's even easier to learn how to program without paying anything.
But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s, magazines not even oriented at "developers" but more "power users", you'll find huge chunks of content devoted to programming --- not just BASIC, but Asm (DOS's DEBUG command was the preferred method of creating small utilities), undocumented features, controlling hardware, and the like. Programming was viewed more as a progression/spectrum from novice -> power user -> programmer, with the result that a lot of users knew the basic concepts of how computers worked and would not have much trouble making little modifications to the Asm listings they found in order to customise them to their needs.
Contrast this with the locked-down walled-garden ecosystems where you can't even easily control the behaviour of, much less write programs for, on the device you bought!