The Little Coder's Predicament (opens in new tab)

I was a new programmer in the late 70's. I remember hanging in local computer stores and trying out the programming capabilities of the system they had on display. Mostly basic, one had FORTRAN. Inadvertently helped to sell a 10k-ish (CDN $) Unix system (Fortune 32:16 https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=767) because of the programs I wrote and ran while a potential client was there. The owner never bothered me for loitering in his store again.

The cheaper ones included the TRS80, Timex-Sinclair, the TI 99/4A. Turn them on and code. Yes I RTFMed first.

The requirement to use game console for programming is not obvious to me. Yes, Commodore 64 was "PC of today" -- but Atari 2600 was "xbox of today", only programmable using complex procedures.

And once you stop looking at consoles, there are many programming languages suitable for beginners, many even web-based. For example, MIT Scratch is visual language, but satisfies many of author's requirements.