Why the Fascination with Retrocomputing?

Also, the computer community at the time was more literate, in average.

Everyone who had to work with computers had to learn how a computer works, how to work with the command prompt. In a way, you had to become a pseudo IT guy. Everyone who used computers knew more or less how do they work. The rest just didn't use computers at all.

So, they were few and they all learned how a computer "thinks". There was no room for dark patterns or addiction to devices. From a distance, it was way more wholesome than today.

Retrocomputing can be dubbed 'xenocomputing studies'. So many foreign concepts, languages, utilities that may as well have been made by aliens. And people are fascinated by aliens or those legendary heroes of ages past that lived in Atlantis, built cyclopic computers ranging in size from a simple dolmen to the mighty Stonehenge, and managed to design H-bombs and continental air defense systems.

Honestly, I love retro computers and loved the era, because you had almost full control over your stuff. Not like today, where, at least if you're in web dev, you are constantly messed up by other people's poor choices or business goals somewhere in your stack.

> For the most part, retrocompting is a hobby, but I think that most people involved in the hobby actually work in the computing industry, or are training to.

I wonder if there's numbers about that, because it wouldn't have been my guess. Although maybe my impression is colored specifically from the gaming corner of things.