Absolutely. Here in the UK, we had an astonishing programming renaissance in the 1980s, fuelled largely by the Sinclair micros. They were pretty awful computers by most measures, but they were also very cheap, so they sold in their millions.
A talented teenager could spend a few weeks writing a game and realistically hope to see it commercially published. Even the most ambitious games took no more than a few man-months. Several major UK games studios were founded by people in their teens and early twenties during this period, most famously Codemasters. Nobody really knew what they were doing and games were something of a cottage industry, so there were no real barriers to entry. There was a distinct punk sensibility, with weird and irreverent games being published on cheaply-duplicated cassettes.
The British programming boom also benefited from a variety of other factors - the BBC taking a major interest in promoting microcomputers, a very supportive government and an exchange rate that made Japanese consoles punitively expensive.
A talented teenager could spend a few weeks writing a game and realistically hope to see it commercially published. Even the most ambitious games took no more than a few man-months. Several major UK games studios were founded by people in their teens and early twenties during this period, most famously Codemasters. Nobody really knew what they were doing and games were something of a cottage industry, so there were no real barriers to entry. There was a distinct punk sensibility, with weird and irreverent games being published on cheaply-duplicated cassettes.
The British programming boom also benefited from a variety of other factors - the BBC taking a major interest in promoting microcomputers, a very supportive government and an exchange rate that made Japanese consoles punitively expensive.