ZZT was really fun when I was a budding programmer. It allowed me to understand simple concepts like spatial awareness of entities in arbitrary spaces, more complicated enemy AI (for my low standards at the time) and states in a more practical way.
Megazeux was the advanced, deluxe cousin of ZZT, worth checking out if you like the idea but want something with a bit more flair.
Related to the topic, there's this interesting Youtube playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL71MurckxMeDCeOrKZ5Gd... detailing the basics of running, editing and programming ZZT in a modern computer. It may be interesting for those that want to see how it works without diving into documentation.
It was kind of a thing when I was in Junior High and High School for those of us with older hand me down computers. Spent a lot of time working on games and then taking them over to friends places on the weekends.
The resulting program, when compiled with Turbo Pascal 5.5, produces a ZZT.EXE executable byte-for byte identical to the original.
Megazeux was the advanced, deluxe cousin of ZZT, worth checking out if you like the idea but want something with a bit more flair.
I seem to remember it barely had any maps or fun things to get online, so you might be entirely right about that.
This whole branch of text mode DOS games seems very "you had to be there" for me - quite unlike eg. text roguelikes.