What I liked about those days of computing is that you could invest time in a system and not expect it to be obsolete by the time you felt comfortable with it. And also that you could actually know the whole system. In that sense modern software development is very quick to give you some result but you're building on so many layers of potential trouble that the result never really feels quite as solid and deterministic. Old computers failed because the hardware failed, modern computers fail in weird organic ways when some subsystem far down in the stack temporarily gives out and you'll never know what actually caused the problem.
'Refresh the page' is the modern day equivalent of 'control-alt-delete' from PC era, but before then stuff usually 'just worked' once it worked and it kept on working until the hardware gave out.
I think this is part of what's behind the surge of interest in retrocomputing. As you say, those old 8-bit systems could be understood in their entirety by a single person. I know it's part of what has drawn me into the world of Arduino and other microcontrollers. It's fun to play with a simple system and get instant feedback from a blinky light.
Having said that, 512x480 with non-square pixels is a blight on the Universe.
