I was a kid reading 'Popular Electronics' in the mid 70's in a rural Florida high school. I did an English class presentation on transistors, mentioning Moore's Law. My electronics never got past the Radio Shack 150-in-1 Electronics kit and I went into software. I feel like I owe my career there to the work of the geniuses like Moore who not only made something rare and special, they made it common, nearly universal.
Dad was an electrical automotive mechanic so I didn't have a choice there.
Did EE/CS and have all the standard electronic lab bits from a trinocular microscope w/ polarized ring light to the JBC knock-off soldering station. I keep meaning to buy an HP 54600B to get the Tetris easter egg.
Software and systems are where the money's at now (until the tech singularity ruins it), hardware is just for fun.
These kits were awesome, BTW. I had one too. I know you can find them still on Amazon, but I never got my kid, who's otherwise into computers, interested in them.
