I think today's equivalent to what I used to do (i.e. playing with an accidental ProDos prompt) is running the browser's developer console (which you most certainly can do on a chromebook) and perhaps running a shell on the RPi.
I don't really understand why a good editor is necessary in the sense of my old nostalgia or how I would try to streamline the learning/tinkering process today. While I see no specific value in anything in the gap between using whatever debugger/interaction the system offers to futz with the most visible levels and jumping to an online Python/processing/whatever notebook, I suppose starting anywhere that stokes one's curiosity is just as good as anywhere else.
I don't really understand why a good editor is necessary in the sense of my old nostalgia or how I would try to streamline the learning/tinkering process today. While I see no specific value in anything in the gap between using whatever debugger/interaction the system offers to futz with the most visible levels and jumping to an online Python/processing/whatever notebook, I suppose starting anywhere that stokes one's curiosity is just as good as anywhere else.