The difference there is that you had a difficult, meaningful, constructive experience instead of one designed to just addict you. Even though both were running on von Neumann machines.

I think there is a meaningful difference between an Intel 486 and a portable device like a tablet, especially if the former is not connected to the internet (or is connected to the internet as it was circa 1995). I think it could be fine and even beneficial to give a kid a desktop computer to write games using QuickBasic, and at the same time very harmful to give them a tablet.

You brought me back to hand-drawing platformer puzzle levels for my fictional game as a kid. Good times.