Back when digital computing was first becoming a thing.

Think 1970s and 1980s, when there were still a lot of punch cards in circulation,

and when terminals, which were basically access points for larger, room-sized computers,

were still more common than anything you might call a personal computer,

which were in some rare cases available

from the early 1970s, but which were generally too expensive for individuals to own.

Back in this early period of digital computing, commercially available software was limited.

So the folks who used computers generally had to make their own software.

If you wanted to use a computer, in other words, you had to learn to code, because otherwise

that computer wouldn't do much beyond maybe turning on and off.

Many people who had access to such hardware during these early digital decades

were academics and scientists and researchers, professionals and students who had specific

use cases for these devices, and they would thus build software optimized for their specific

needs. So mathematicians might make programs that helped them

perform complex formulas and cartographers might cobble together code that helped them reproduce

and share digital versions of maps. The first personal computers, where all the hardware was stored

within a box, small enough to fit on someone's desk,

rather than filling up a room and requiring a desk-sized terminal just to access that larger processing hub,

were usually called microcomputers and would typically be sold as kits.

Many such kits could be ordered through hobbyist magazines

and were generally limited in availability

and would have to be put together by the end user.

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