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You can take the approach that "the old way is the only way," or you can try to find the current way to do things.
For the Mac, for example (towards which I am biased), there's shell scripting, awk, perl, python, and AppleScript. All of these come with the system; several of them have the ability to set down and start doing something. There are also free BASIC interpreters available, although they're very limited.
For Windows, there's still the DOS interpreter, and you can get VisualBasic.
The ability to get down and poke at the system is still there... but the systems these days have so much more on them that it can be harder to find. And, in many cases, harder to do anything immediately-gratifying with.
And then there are the other things, that weren't available Way Back When: the Lego Mindstorms kits, for example, which allow you to do LOGO-like programming with an actual robot that you yourself have constructed, complete with sensory input. Yes, higher-level than BASIC is, but it's still a way to get kids hooked on the concepts.
But, just because I am obliged to agree with you SOMETIMES :)... where's the equivalent of the Sinclair? A super-cheap computer, that you can virtuallly immediately start doing things with? That does appear to be a lost niche.
