Oh, and if the author thought that modding Half-Life by changing a couple images around was creative freedom, his mind will be blown by 80s home computers, which booted directly into BASIC. Growing up, I learned that a computer is to be programmed as a pencil is to be written with, from machines whose first act upon power-on was to cry out to be programmed. Since 32-bit Windows, computers haven't even shipped with BASIC in a meaningful sense. Computing, for most people, boiled down to "using applications"—word processor, spreadsheet, browser. We've only just dumbed these down even more, including shortening the term to "apps".
It "booted" into an IDE before you could turn on the monitor (sold separately). You were programming within 15 minutes--you had to be, there was nothing else to do.
