Sure, but all that is useless if motivation is missing. A BASIC prompt, or even a terminal into which type commands, is infinitly more motivating w.r.t programming than a desktop filled with "Apps".
That’s not me just being glib. We have almost a million percent more engineers these days, and that number is very nearly not an exaggeration.
I’ll take that over your BASIC prompt plus “intrinsic motivation”, whatever that is. By every possible measure, more of the people you think probably “should” be software engineers are today.
So basically I think programming should be something that a lay person do, like learning to drive a car.
Computers being insanely useful out of the box is what has driven their adoption, and that widespread access has done more to enable people to explore programming than dropping hapless novices into a BASIC prompt at startup.
Capable, yes. Because there is Internet.
But is it easily discoverable? and is it interesting once discovered? No and No.
You keep changing the point you’re trying to make.
6,800 SW engineers in 1985
that's what I found - probably not called SW engineers in 1985 though