alt Hacker NewsI think you were the exception. Most kids never even knew what BASIC was. If there was a game already on the computer, they'd be happy to play it. If they really liked the game they might learn how to start the game if it wasn't already running, but they didn't care about doing anything else. Kids who were into computers looked at a computer and saw endless possibility. Everybody else played sports outside, watched TV, or hung out with their friends.
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Probably for quite a while kids were more likely to have a console than access to an actual computer. But if you had a computer it was not like you could rely on having someone else around to start up the game for you. In fact there was a good chance that your access to a computer was arranged by adults who specifically expected you to learn how to use it.
It was probably a function of not just personality type but education. For whatever reason I was taught basic in elementary school as a millennial and it left an impression.
In that area, kids with computers that booted straight to basic like the spectrum, bbc micro, c64 etc fell into two camps -- those who were interested, and those whose parents were interested. I suspect the former were more numerous, as to have a parent interested enough to spend a fortune on a computer without the pester power of the kid feels quite niche.
The vast majority of kids never touched computers, other than maybe running logo at school to move a turtle around.
Most kids who were only interested in a game had a NES or Sega console.
Of the former group, the awe began when you wrote in the example program from the manual or magazine, made it do something, and then changed it. Even something as simple as changing from 3 lives to 99.
Why would you get a computer in that era if you didn't want to learn BASIC?
> Most kids never even knew what BASIC was
Yet magazines and books commonly published program listings for games in BASIC which many kids somehow managed to type in and run.