Playing a devil's advocate - if you have to scrap by with little memory and few services, you focus on your mission, not distractions like code elegance, library choices and build systems.

We had no alternatives, it was either whatever we managed to get hold of, with whatever information that we could gather from the provided manuals, a few magazines, and if lucky, the local library.

Ironically, the BASIC + Assembly combo continues to this day, even if done in different tongues.

ZX Spectrum was one of the few inexpensive options, especially with color support. However terrible it was, it was also very enticing, or just the only thing you had at home, and could tinker with.