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    You nailed it. Having a multi-line screen rather than just a printing tty or single line makes it easier, but without a source file concept it's still line oriented. Commented Feb 11, 2016 at 7:16
  • The fact that the system is an 8-bit architecture isn't really the limiting factor, though. Now, the fact that said system might have only a few kilobytes of RAM and a handful of kilobytes of ROM, and possibly even no permanent storage (if your casette tape recorder broke)... Commented Feb 11, 2016 at 20:37
  • it's still hard to imagine coding without a text editor Commented Feb 12, 2016 at 14:12
  • @LưuVĩnhPhúc Well, there are plenty of emulators for running "the real thing", such as almost any 8-bit home computer, or MSDOS and its GWBASIC with dosbox. Just as an example, you could get one of the many C64 emulators, and then Google to find its User's Guide as PDF :-) Commented Feb 12, 2016 at 15:31
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    @phuclv - Hard to imagine coding without a text editor now. At the time, hard to imagine the inconvenience of having to use a text editor, save it, and compile it before it could be run ... and that's really what came next to the PC world; Pascal and C. Both compiled languages, both freely editable with a text editor, both definitely not a programming environment in and of themselves (BASIC was both programming environment and runtime environment). Pascal was my next language, and in many ways quite liberating. Definitely more powerful. But in other ways, a little less thrilling. Commented Sep 3, 2019 at 2:55