I just rediscovered my first computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (good picture) which I bought back in 1983 or 1984 (I have no trace of the exact date, unfortunately). The machine was a perfect machine to learn programming on in my opinion, consisting of little more than a Z80 processor with memory, bit-mapped display (with a famously odd-ball addressing scheme and color handling) and ultra-simple sound output and input. Most of my friends in the end bought Commodore C64 machines, which had more powerful graphics and sound hardware, but a processor that was much less fun to program.
The Spectrum came with a built-in BASIC interpreter that are up the bottom 16kB of the 64kB addressing space. The BASIC was actually fairly powerful and easy-to-use, and included a very fun programming textbook. I just reread that textbook, and it is quite strikingly well-written and manages to cover both basic computer-science-style programming and deep close-to-the-machine and real-time programming in a compact 150 pages. There is no credit to a particular author in the book I have (Swedish translation by a group of people at Ord & Form here in Uppsala), but an online scan credits Steven Vickers.