Another barrier in the way of kids-of-today is how complex real-world programs are. Back when I were a lad, I could write shoot-em-ups and AI-type programs that were as good as the ones magazines published for you to type in, even if they weren't as good as the ones you had to pay real money for, and because they were as good as those people were impressed. These days it takes whole departments just to write a soundtrack, so why bother cobbling something together as a beginner in the evenings?

And you could hack into a fair few games programs, and give yourself infinite lives, or make your charactor walk around on his head by adding one minus sign, which was great fun.

I've been thinking about this in the abstract - why would people want a crap local home made version of something when the world has shrunk so much that the "best" is so easily accessible (whether it be plays, books, computer programmes, dresses, etc). I think a large chunk of it is so that someone is interested in _their_ home made version. And the human touch that is so interesting - when you read a book written by someone you know, you don't just learn about the book...

On the other hand, you can throw together a version of pac man or space invaders in an afternoon using widgets and copying bits written by other people and posted on the web. Swings and roundabouts...