Yes, that can't have been a lof of people.
The microcomputer movement was hugely influential to people who were children and teenagers at the time, since they were the ones able to spend lots of lightly supervised time trying things and learning at an impressionable age.
The BBC has a good list of "origin stories" of founders who started on the BBC micro here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065
Between those three I couldn't wait to get home to get something done.
The edit-compile-test cycle on those mainframes was so ridiculously long it would be a good day if you got three turnarounds, on a bad day you got none. Compared to seconds for my home stuff. Shortly after that I got an Atari 68K machine and that felt like unlocking God mode.
Mainframes are powerful in the same way that tractors are powerful: you can do an awful lot of work if you have an awful lot of work.
If you are just programming or learning then something smaller is far more effective, on top of that the lack of resources will teach you all you need to know about efficiency.
This is a great way to put the trouble with lots of complex tooling, not just oversized computers. Thanks!
Had great fun with the SPV command, used that to code up a keylogger. Was able to pull up a spoof login screen on all the terminals using that and able to pass off input as commands and the end user would be none the wiser.
Other great find was that back then discs were big and expensive and not as reliable, so they rotated the discs to even out the wear. They also didn't fully erase them and if you created a file, you had to specify to zero it as an option. This allowed you to create a file, dump the contents and read what was previously upon the discs. Now as the operator console would create a journal log of everything typed (including login and password - everything typed) and factoring in disc rotation, then it was possible as a user to create files upon what was a disc previously used for console journal logging and read the contents. This yielded the username and password of the system admin at college and even today recall that wonderful admin/5588 username and password.
Fun times indeed.
That's what's sadly missing from modern computing. Everyone involved with making anything new seems to have a complexity-fetish. Consequently, it is now 2018 and applications are still perceptably non-responsive even when performing the same tasks we used to do with technology several orders of magnitude less performant.
8-bit micros like the Spectrum and BBC were powerful enough to get useful work done, but simple enough to offer simple instant gratification.
You could learn everything you needed about BASIC from a fairly small paper manual, and after that - or sometimes during - you learned the rest by example from monthly magazines.
The monthly format worked very well, providing a digestible amount of information on a regular schedule.
The Pi is a complete different experience. Command-line Linux is completely unsuited to most beginners, and desktop Linux really needs command-line skills to be usable. The Pi tries to teach Linux, basic electronics, Python (etc), and simple web tech all at the same time, and that's too much ground to cover at once.
Meanwhile the Bit is too simple to be useful. You can make LEDs flash on and off, but that's not nearly as exciting as being able to write and play a complete game.
I'm occasionally surprised no one has built an 8-bit-like neo-micro booting into the Python interpreter, which is probably the closest thing to BASIC we have today.
Although given that everyone has a phone now, and most people have tablets and desktops, the ideal modern environment would probably be something like a more accessible version of Swift playgrounds - if only because that "You too can access incredible technology at home" thing is an historic relic now.
Micro:bit is remarkably similar to the programmable badges you get at conferences like Defcon, which is no accident. It's tremendous fun to have a little gadget that you can tinker with and show off to your friends. Kids are natural hackers. Every time they grok a basic concept, they have twenty different ideas about what they could do with it. The micro:bit isn't a primitive computer - it's the brain of a robot, it's a burglar alarm, it's a fitness tracker, it's a million different things just waiting to be built.
One of the most interesting ones was using a BBC micro to front end a huge model of the terminal outfall for a nuke plant in china - allegedly one time some Chinese visitors where so impressed they sent the weekend buying up BBC micros to take back with them.
Only those of richer families though, home computers were very expensive.
The Timex branded version came out the next year.