My first exposure to computers was with a Commodore 64, on which I had also first learnt to code. I wasn't even aware of the 2600 until later. Compared to what I could do on the C64, 2600 BASIC _was_ useless. Doesn't make it any less of a technical marvel, though.
Useless means different things to different people, it is a subjective quality. It was useless for production use but not useless as a child experience where you don't have any access to computers. I can say the same to the first programmable calculators.
