The most I miss about those times is the simplicity and availability. Each computer had BASIC. Did not matter what computer. Now Windows comes default with Powershell and .NET (?) but no IDE. Linux comes default with Python and vi but that is hardly for beginners. As I am a Java developer I follow the developments of Java and recently stuff has been added to make Java easy to start with. So you can start with only "void main() { System.out.println("Hello world"); }" and it would run. Nice that people can get into coding easier but you still need to find an IDE and download an SDK...
And each BASIC was usually capable of direct hardware control.
That was one of the differences between different proprietary BASIC versions.
They each had the same "framework" but were enhanced with the extra commands or syntax to accommodate the specific hardware they were intended to be used with.
I would say that ROM BASIC, and even better combined with an industrial-grade ROM OS, was the desktop paradigm that should never have been compromised.
Too bad ROM chips were so much more expensive than floppy disk storage, so we got "Disk Operating Systems" instead and here we are.
Then as soon as the IBM PC was beginning to be well-adopted by businesses, no more BASIC ROMs for you.
After that BASIC would be supplied on floppy disk, and you would have to pay extra, if you even knew it had been the key to user programmability on everything comparable that went before, most of what was still out there.
Like Commodores, TRS-80's, Ataris, Apples, and all early IBM PCs up until that point.
But most people weren't going to pay extra for many reasons and the user-programmability of the PC, as well as it's widespread readiness for any PC to run anybody's BASIC program with no other dependencies, dropped to an abysmally nil level compared to how it was the year before. Never has recovered either.
Even though there was very little software yet that did lots of things that specific users might have been wanting to do, so with a desktop computer boom there was a need for more user-programming than ever. On what started out to be a universal platform, pulling those ROMs was like pulling the rug out from under the future as it was intended to be up until that point. With 20/20 hindsight it looks like billions in lost opportunities for PC owners or operators to make the most of their PCs across-the-board for decades. When you think about it, simplicity & availability, or lack of it, can be worth a lot and really add up over that much time.
But losing the integrity level traditionally needed for an immutable ROM OS, that truly had to be a finished product before release, had been the bigger blow to begin with.
For PowerShell there is the PowerShell ISE (ISE.exe) which is included out of the box, I think. But that's a far cry from the simplicity of BASIC, of course. And I guess the modern equivalent is probably JavaScript in the browser, but that's a whole other can of worms for beginning programming.
Pretty sure Windows comes by default with the Powershell ISE, although it's not developed further anymore. It also only comes with the .NET runtime, not the SDK.
Installing VSCode and some extensions would get you pretty far though.
btw. installing "java" is now very easy, you just need to install jetbrains toolbox, from there install intellij community edition (1 click), which installs a jdk for you with (2-3 clicks), when it detects that you need one.
I think GW-BASIC is a better introduction to programming than Python. Its limited power is an advantage for teaching and learning. Python is a much better language for solving real-world problems, but the student doesn't always understand what's actually happening in many cases.
This is something I'm thinking about every now and then when my mind starts to wander - if I'd be teleported back to the early 80s, how much of an advantage would I actually have with my current knowledge. Just always knowing which technology will emerge and persist on its own is a huge advantage, paired with knowledge of what trends regarding end users come up when. That alone probably dwarfs any advantage you have in technical knowledge. 8088mph would blow people's minds back then, but being able to do that would probably not be the thing that leads to success, but definitely gives you a shit ton of intern^WBBS street cred. :)
After 28 years of leaving BASIC for C and then Java, I took a course on data science using Python. I heartily agree with you. The simplicity and power Python brings is refreshing.
But, if I was forced to go back to these times I know my warm feelings would eventually turn to horror.
Things are better now.
We can do so much more.
But a part of me misses these simple times.
Python is a decent proxy for this simplicity though and wildly more productive.