Right place, right time, right level of curiosity. Back then, I didn't really have a choice: there weren't any other books in my school library, I didn't want to spend lunchtimes in the playground (I was being bullied), I knew programming would be potentially useful (my Dad had switched from being an accountant to something I heard was called a "systems analyst", which I knew had something to do with computers, and had allowed him to emigrate with his new family), and well, I was a bit of a mess.
I have seen some of the newer projects, and like I say, the Raspberry Pi stuff makes programmable computing accessible to a kid without much, I just don't think the bar overall is as low as it was for me.
And yeah, survivorship bias, and a weird population skew with me: I was literally the only kid in that computer room determined to learn how to code.
A windows laptop from today is vastly easier to code on that a C64 or whatever. Most houses would have an internet connection as well so they can get to all sorts of things.
A Raspberry Pi is probably something richer kids get to play with.
Primary School kids today in Australia often get a Chromebook and have some tutoring in Scratch. Again, it gets you the ideas of coding in a way that more kids will get.
You mention the lack of alternatives that got you and other kids into coding. That's probably a thing. There is so much more entertainment available today that most kids probably don't get bored like kids did in the past and sat down and learnt to code. It has to be more intentional.
When I was a kid my mum was a teacher and brought home a computer over the school holidays which had no games. I taught myself databases and spreadsheets because there was a good tutorial on that.
There is also probably something in that until, say, the 2010s computers were not quite ubiquitous enough that they were a constant part of kids lives. Certainly in the 1980s and 1990s there was something almost magical about the devices. A kid today who grows up in a household with smartphones, tablets, laptops and multiple smart TVs probably won't get the same thrill about moving an object around a screen as someone did 30+ years ago.
I have seen some of the newer projects, and like I say, the Raspberry Pi stuff makes programmable computing accessible to a kid without much, I just don't think the bar overall is as low as it was for me.
And yeah, survivorship bias, and a weird population skew with me: I was literally the only kid in that computer room determined to learn how to code.