Really great paper from last year about what the Commodore 64 programming experience had that we don't have anymore. http://tomasp.net/commodore64/

Yeah.. the commodore 64 .. that brings back good memories.. for me my first steps into programming (basic and assembly). This year I have been playing with webassembly and I am convinced that learning assembly on the c64 all those years ago really helped me with that

I started programming on a ZX Spectrum, and yes, that feeling of immediate programming and having results was something I missed when I started learning "how coding is really done by professionals". IMHO, programming notebooks bring a lot of that experience back, and they don't rely on cumbersome BASIC line numbers to keep your sentences in the correct order. In contrast, the fact that they rely on a running server makes their installation and the configuration of the working environment quite a bit more complex. It would be nice to have more stand-alone programming environments that behave like notebooks.

This person's website and research just makes me want to quit my job and become a PhD student... darn it