Machines and systems are too large to be built alone. But put me down in front of a 6502 Atari. It’s programming a computer with only 56 instructions in a man vs machine death match.

With a current new machine a newbie can not do ANYTHING. With the old machine you could do tons of things. A lot of stuff was in your operating system by default. Programming could be done on ANY new computer as BASIC was a default item in your system. Currently there is no programming language that is as simple as BASIC. Any language has a huge learning curve

I think retrocomputing also harkens back to a time when you owned a machine, rather than the other way around. No subscriptions, no advertising, no forced obsolescence.

Additionally, older systems are completely void of the constant war against the system. At some point, systems felt like a professional tool to do stuff, now it’s more a feeling of using a rented consumer gadget you have to forcefully pressure into a deterministic no-nonsense-mode. As if these were never meant to be used productively.

distraction free computing. your computer did 1 thing at a time. your attention was focused on that one single task to the exclusion of everything else. no interruptions, no distractions of emails, messages, web.

your computer was secure, it was connected to nothing but a few peripherals. now it's constantly connected to an insecure network that is looking for new and clever ways to find your identity to steal, your credit card information to sell and abuse.