Yes please make a movie about your next it projekt ;)

I even hate repair-videos on youtube, it's slow and lame, the fix-it manuals are 1000s times better (since i know what a torx is and that most screws open counter-clock-wise)

Nowadays? Not so much."

Yeah, I call BS on that. This bubble us techie live in it paints this sort of boring. Try go on the country side or in another industry and suddenly you are looked upon as some sort of god - it's almost cringy they way they treat you when you spend 5 minutes fixing something that half the village tried to fix it in past year and then they gave up.

Some of us here actually worked on badly made/failing hardware and computers without (dev) software ; let alone internet and mostly not even books or mags to check out.

I for one had no modem, no places to get literature/mags and no friends who had computers; whatever I needed as tools, I had to write myself (sprite editor, assembler, etc) based on 1 book that a colleague of my father got from Japan.

I learned about the hardware because computers where freakishly expensive but luckily had 74series (and before logic made up out of transistors) inside and when you would buy a computer, it would then often contain all the circuit diagrams so you could figure out what was happening and expand memory, make extensions etc.

Now, I'm not a very smart person and this is not a pissing contest, but what you are saying is just not accurate. You have a wealth of information and tooling at your fingertips that was out of reach for almost everyone but big companies in the 70s/begin 80s. Many people worked 'from first principles' with no help and continuously crashing systems without being about to ask anything. And yet we made interfaces, programs, ultimately everything you have now is based on the people who figured all this out back then.

A browser is the furthest from the hardware I can imagine; it is a (badly done imho) abstraction over the sheer bizarre power you have in front of you.

You might be brilliant at what you do, but let's be real about it.

I had the same experience, until I (we)found that the knowledge of those magazines were taken from books, so I(we) went to the source, the library of the University.

I was a kid at the time and had friends that shared the same interests as me. The library was magical.

Even today, when there is lots of amazing materials on the web, the real deep stuff is in books.

One of the great things of Internet, specially videos is that they introduce you to a topic so you can understand the book.

But are they? Computers have become insanely complicated.

I feel this way. I've been at this a long time but all my non-work computing is either futzing about or incredibly low-value. Spreadsheets are pretty nice but I could do without them. Some kind of instant messaging or email is pretty useful. Calendar reminders are nice. But there are decent alternatives to all of them that aren't really that much worse, for personal use, while computers are expensive and take up a lot of time, especially to get good enough to use them without constantly being confused and mystified (see: any non-nerds using computers).

90%ish of what I get out of all this, personally, is media access, which could be almost perfectly replaced by living somewhat closer to a library and having a Netflix DVD subscription. I kinda think the everything-always-available aspect actually makes things worse, so a little extra friction or forcing choices might be an improvement. Ditto spending—I think any savings from online shopping is probably exceeded, for most people, by increased total spending.

It's looking increasingly likely I'll never start a significant side-project, let alone found a product of any significance whatsoever, because I just can't think of anything useful to do with these magical boxes that's not already being done. Since everyone says that business ideas are the easy part I guess I'm truly fucked because I can't even come up with one of those that survives a day of thought and research. I look at computers and the Internet and see a time-suck that is, most of the time, ill-applied, dangerous, and probably harming productivity in most areas.

[EDIT] to support the "expensive" thing, say it's about $2000 every four years per person to keep in smartphones and larger computing devices that don't take up too much space (laptop or tablet), that work well enough to actually be semi-useful rather than just a constant pain in your ass, and that will actually probably last and remain usable for four years, on average. Two adults in a household, that's about $1,000/yr in hardware, no tinkering, no gaming consoles, no bling'd out new phone every year, no peripherals, just to basically get the "job" done. Two streaming services of some kind, call it $20/mo, and that's a pretty low count. Good home Internet plus the Internet portion of your cell phone bill, for me, that's about $110/mo combined for the two of us (kids don't have their own stuff yet, and hell, may not at all until they can pay for it, because this stuff's expensive). That totals to about $2500/yr. You can buy a hell of a lot of physical media, (physical) games, postage stamps, puzzle books, whatever, for $2500/yr, and if you don't just throw it away you can keep using all that stuff the next year, and the one after, without paying again.

Not just computing. Compared to my childhood in the 60s/70s (I'm gen X, though my early childhood was not in the US), life is highly professionalized. Sport used to be played by everyone, now even school kids specialize and have fancy training. Music is less ad hoc though admittedly that had become a factory product by the 60s.

And it was easier to tinker. Nowadays people talk of "building" a PC when they are just gluing together lego blocks. That is great in that it opens up the opportunity for many more people to program, but at a cost of hardware tinkering. It used to be obvious by looking at a car motor what was going on. Now they are boring.

When video games were starting they were a gateway to programming for lots of kids. Now they are part of an ecosystem of toys that play with the kids (rather than the kids playing with them) and are generally part of an integrated marketing ecosystem ("franchise") that has characters and storylines that integrate film, video, toys...where is open ended imagination? Fandom is more consumption of someone else's thinking now than it used to be.

I know, sounds like a curmudgeon's lament.

> It doesn't help that the signal-to-noise ratio is now much lower.

I am not sure that's true. There's a survivorship bias in that we still read the work of the greats, while most of the crud is lost. I recently tossed out several shelves worth of old CS papers from the 60s-80s that I knew I'd never look at again. Dead end CPU designs, absurd (in retrospect) claims, all sorts of crud.

There is lots of fabulous thinking from the ancient Greeks, but what's survived is an infinitesimal portion of what was produced...I assume none or hardly any of what perished was worth re-reading.

I suspect it is the same progression as any other new technology that undergoes mainstreaming. Take automobiles for example. In the early days if you owned a car you either made yourself something of an expert (and if you were an early buyer you were probably kind of an enthusiast already) or you hired one. Today outside of enthusiast circles they are just an appliance: you get in, turn it on, and go do whatever it is you need to do.

That might be true but it isn't required. Its cheaper and easier to access information today than its ever been, but doesn't mean people are more literate and more informed - they aren't. Years ago using computers and getting everything to work required that you learn at least the basics and how to tinker with different things and get a basic understanding for them to work. These days most people are using tablet and other simple, graphically designed interfaces that don't require (or in many cases allow) any substantial tinkering in order to get them to work or do what you want them to do.

Necessity is the mother of invention, not availability.

I am (still!) amazed by the gap between how I see a computer and how most non-geeks around me do. To them, it's like a set of different, often frustrating tools rather than, well, an amazing piece of technology that can be prodded to do whatever you want (to the point where an iPad with few to no apps can provide them with all they need).

To me, there's a joy to finding just the right framework, app, or library that can do what I need done. To the point where I might end up enjoying the process a bit too much and get nothing done. To them, it's all about getting stuff done as soon as possible, with whatever they're familiar with. And since they find computers often quite frustrating, they will abuse the hell out of the little bits they know.

And so, in the same way that we would use a lighter to open a bottle if there isn't an opener nearby, they 'abuse' technology by using Excel for everything, or storing their notes in an open notepad window without saving. And as long as that works most of the time, they feel absolutely no incentive to figure out a better way.

Until, of course, it all goes wrong. Then they call us to fix it :-).

I have plenty of other things I’d rather tinker with and become an expert on, though. My computer is a tool to let me work with those things. It’s not fun when I have to debug and fix the tool for hours or days before I can even start working on the things I want to work on.

A funny thing to say, given that today a lot of content requires computers to produce, even abstract art.

> Many people will die having used computers for 10 hours a day but not being able to really act with computers and create with computers

How is that different from people who voraciously read countless books, or watch countless movies, yet never produce anything at all, in whatever domain.

Not everybody wants to be a producer. Some people are perfectly happy just consuming, or partying all day.

Honestly when I was younger computers were just a lot more fun. You want to do a LAN party? Be prepared for an hour of diagnosing network problems -- and we liked that! Take that one example and multiply it by everything. Tweaking and customizing and finding random cool software was all part of the experience.

Same with smartphones before the iPhone.

These days perhaps products all just too good and too finished. They are just tools now -- they have less intrinsic fun hacker value on their own.

I have gone a little Retro -- picking up old devices and not using them for anything useful.

This is definitely a contributing factor. Forcing non-technical people to use computers is a rather daft idea, but it saves money since the majority know just about enough about computing to manage to do things after a bit of trial and error. Any bump in the road is sure to cause tears and shouting though.

How is that different from anything else nowadays? That's what computers do for us.

Making calculations, decrypting text, generating art, developing a software.

All of these used to be harder and more manual and time-consuming. Now, anyone with a computer or a phone and an app can do these things way easier, and I'm sure there are better examples I failed to think of.

It only makes sense that even the "bad" uses of a computer will be benefitted by computer progress.

For us that have already been spoiled by modern computing, we need to be shown what useful stuff that we can do by learning about computers (obviously we would need to be on a relatively open modern computer). If most people are satisfied with whatever gets them through the more-or-less intuitive GUIs that lets them watch some videos, do they really need to know more? Well yes, when their computer eventually starts behaving strangely and simply restarting it doesn't help... but that kind of frustrating troubleshooting doesn't leave a good taste in many people's mouth when it comes to having to deal with computers.

If they are already used to modern, powerful computing, chances are that they won't be impressed by the usual computer wizardry that programmers are impressed by. Simply because they don't need, or don't see the utility in, shuffling a bunch of text around efficiently. Instead of becoming a wiz at retro computing - which might be in part because you need to be a wiz, simply because it is more primitive - what can we impress people with on modern computers that they can't do themselves easily (and would like to do)? They've already been spoiled by modern computing - for many, there is no turning back.

If the only real allure of being a computer whiz - to most people, anyway - is to be able to operate arcane technology, then the value proposition simply isn't there for people that do not appreciate computing in itself (and even that might be an acquired taste, so sort of a catch 22). It's like a classical guitar virtuoso who can be motivated to learn songs and pieces solely for the technical challenge they pose, while his students just want to gain the skills necessary to learn their favourite band's songs, or the songs that they've written themselves.

No. That is besides the point.

There is a big difference in knowing how to repair a computer, how to program a computer and how to do technical tasks with a computer.

Repairing a computer normally involves identifying the part that is faulty and replacing it. On a desktop PC that is relatively because the components go together like Lego pieces tbh. My father managed to replace the memory in his ageing desktop computer by just looking for what the parts were in the machine and just replacing them. He barely understands how to use a keyboard (he highlights each letter with the mouse and presses delete)

I am good at programming computers but I don't understand how Excel works past very basics. My friend who can't "program" with something like a text editor or IDE, she will quite happily do all sorts of complicated tasks with sheets and cells in it all day.

> Just as not all people are born with innate ability to write a good novel, paint a masterpiece, write a symphony, or lead a nation, I'd say no.

I never claimed the opposite.

However there are plenty of people while they can't write a symphony can start up their own metal tribute band and make quite a lot of money.

You are painting it as a binary of people that can't do something and people that have mastered something. There are plenty room inbetween.

This place is called hackernews and I have explain this point sooo verbosely. This must be satire.

> But all people are born with the ability to live their own life and learn how best to do it in the direction that seems natural for themselves.

Some aren't actually. I have a friend that looks after seriously mentally ill people. They must be cared for almost 24/7. There is one lad he told me about that will masturbate in public because he has no concept of it being socially unacceptable due to having somethign similar to asbergers IIRC.

> You are confusing the spirit of this discourse.

I don't think so.

Even working in IT this is an issue. For something I used to do we needed to take a bunch of input and turn it into a basic csv before it could be used. For example, feeding a bunch of servers names into some kind of script. People kept coming to me to help them put this together, because I was decent with a text editor. Eventually I decided to make a little website that let people dump in all their garbage data; it would clean it up and format it in various formats, depending on what they needed it for. I figured one or two people on the team would get some use out of it. How wrong I was. It was being used hundreds of times per month. I was attending a demo for some other team a couple years later and someone on the demo used it to get his input in order before using whatever he was trying to demo. Some of these seemingly basic things can be huge for enabling people to do their job effectively.

I always thought I shouldn't have gone into IT, but something else... anything else... and simply used computer skills as a super power. The productivity someone with some basic computer skills can have, compared to the others who don't, is crazy.

You're absolutely right. These things seem to make the assumption that you can't get the same satisfaction from crafting something digitally as you can from say working on a motorbike.

I would be interested to see a study, if it's not already available, on the psychological experience between people carrying out both, and the sense of satisfaction received when they determine a "job well done" in either medium.

But that's not to say I don't agree with him in many ways. I'm a software developer and often, and as I'm getting towards my 30s now, feel like I've totally surrounded myself in the digital and have put the physical on a shelf that is only continuing to gather dust.

I find myself yearning for something more "substantial" and to be able to come to old age knowing I've done more than written a few programs or whatever but then I find myself so distracted when it comes to actually seeking out things of substance, often simply falling back on the comfort of the digital.

I've a massive stack of books I've been trying to get through and can see myself adding more to it with this, and probably some similar books like "The Shallows" and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

I'm glad to see this sort of content appearing on HN regularly though, as it's a sign I'm not alone in how I'm feeling and that others are working through the same issues.

Between things like this, the massive growth in interest in craft beers, the middle class worker fueling an interest in things like drinking in warehouses, farmers markets, etc. there is obviously a significant amount of people in the rat race who are grasping for something of "substance" and not the bland, mass produced, formulated and heavily marketed lifestyle we've somewhat fallen into in the last few decades.