I would agree with this, I came up in the same time period and we just programmed closer to the metal in that period, we did not have the layers and it was just normal to think in terms of the machines hardware (memory addresses, registers, interrupts, clock, etc.) This naturally leads to a procedural way of thinking, variables where a think veil over the actual memory they addressed.
It actually takes a lot of unlearning to let go of control of the machine and let it solve the problem, when you are used to telling it how to solve the problem. I came to that conclusion when I dabbled in ProLog just to learn something different, and I had a really hard time getting my head around CL when I first got into it, due to wanting to tell then machine exactly how to solve the problem. I think it was just ingrained in those of us that grew up closer to the metal and I think the Byte magazine reference, in the talk, has a lot to do with it, we just did not have that much exposure to other ideas, given that mags and Barns and Noble, where our only source to new ideas. That and most of us where kids just hacking on these things alone in our bedroom with no connectivity to anyone else.
I remember before the web getting on newsgroups and WAIS and thinking how much more info was available that the silo'ed BBS we used to dial into. Then the web hit and suddenly all of these other ideas gained a broader audience.
It actually takes a lot of unlearning to let go of control of the machine and let it solve the problem, when you are used to telling it how to solve the problem. I came to that conclusion when I dabbled in ProLog just to learn something different, and I had a really hard time getting my head around CL when I first got into it, due to wanting to tell then machine exactly how to solve the problem. I think it was just ingrained in those of us that grew up closer to the metal and I think the Byte magazine reference, in the talk, has a lot to do with it, we just did not have that much exposure to other ideas, given that mags and Barns and Noble, where our only source to new ideas. That and most of us where kids just hacking on these things alone in our bedroom with no connectivity to anyone else.
I remember before the web getting on newsgroups and WAIS and thinking how much more info was available that the silo'ed BBS we used to dial into. Then the web hit and suddenly all of these other ideas gained a broader audience.