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The fact that it comes with the complete assembly language, circuit diagrams, and BASIC language reference is something you just don’t see today.
Being able to write whatever in whichever places in memory makes it more of a tool fostering creative expression.
Honestly, before reading through those manuals I never really needed to consider having to implement multiplication in terms of addition instructions.
Even though those are basic properties of arithmetic, it’s easy to take for granted.
It was having to do that (embedded processor) that made me vow to never again code in Assembly and look for a processor that had a cheap C compiler.
It struck me as a little odd because you can't program a computer without having a task that you want to do. That was the boring bit though, getting the computer to do it was where the fun was.
In hindsight I never learned very much from the school computers. The limited access meant you couldn't dedicate the time needed for a deep dive. I was lucky to have computers at home. over time A trs-80, PET, vic-20, c64, Amiga. No Apple at home though. The real learning came from spending hours at a time mucking around with them. Also Compute, and Dr Dobbs were invaluable growing up in a town of about 5,000 information was limited.
For all that people complain about the internet rotting the brains of our youth, I know there are kids out there that are like I was, they have easy access to so much more information. They will do some great things, and they will do it because it's interesting, not because it will make them rich.