Do you think that all people are born with the innate ability to master computers, programming, and other technical tasks?

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.

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.

You are confusing the spirit of this discourse.

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.

This, I think, is the core issue. Like most of us here, I started playing with computers as a young child, from a Timex Sinclair 1000 as a pre-teen to a Commodore 128 as a young teen, then an Amiga and beyond. It wasn't work, it was fun, a hobby. And more importantly, by the time I hit college, I had literally thousands of hours of practice just being immersed in how computers work.

I started tutoring other students in CS for some beer money, and it was a real shock at how awful otherwise very intelligent people were at what I considered utterly trivial questions. But they weren't trivial. They were only simple if you already had a complex, detailed and well-worn model of how computers work running in your head. Without that, even simple computer tasks may as well be written in cuneiform for all the good it does the genuinely new student.

I'm not even sure it is possible to take a young adult who is truly computer illiterate and have them succeed in a technical major. At least not in a standard 4 years. There is simply too much foundational knowledge you need to have before you can even begin the real work of learning what to do.

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.

How do you know?

I presume that you believe that you have critical thinking skills and wouldn't make similar mistakes in other areas of life, but what is your evidence?

You probably know how to use a computer, maybe even fix a car. But how can you know that you don't have similar blindspots when it comes to health, finance, relationships, education, things that are seemingly easy for some people but inexplicably hard for others?

It's too easy to scoff at people being dumb by judging their computer skills on a site called Hacker News. Imagine the analogue article and discussion on a a site called "Fitness News".

I am by most standards a successful founder. I was not hacking on computers at age 13. Why not? My family could not afford a computer at age 13. I got my first computer at 15-16 by essentially fishing it out of a garbage can.

How long did it take me to write my first C program? About a year. Why? Because I was the only person in my (very, very small) hometown who had any affinity or interest in computers in general, let alone programming in particular.

That is why that statement "reeks of privilege."

Well, he does call programming whatever he did.

In '83 they have sold 5 million computers according to the wikipedia[1], I am sure tens of thousands of 6 year olds started programming on them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu...

I tend to agree, But younger people have the 'advantage' of being submerged with computers from a very young age. Children tend to pick up things quicker and easier compared to adults. (this is especially true with language, learning a second language as a child is far easier then doing the same as an adult).

Also, i think its unfair to judge people on their knowledge about computing when they are not in the computing field.

most people don't know how to gearbox in their car works, yet they are still able to use a car just fine.

Same reason it happens for teenage artists, musicians, etc. It's possible, and where there's a possibility, you can bet there will be a bunch of profiteers and elitists trying to push it as the new normal.

You can bet your sweet dollars if it was possible to do so as surgeons (by changing the culture and opening up possibilities), the same would happen there.

Of course, it also completely discredits that people can become amazing at something starting from nothing in old age.

I'm a hacker and "the net" didn't exist before I was 18.

My learning came from the books I bought, and the magazines I subscribed to. Somehow, without IRC or Google to help, I taught myself to program a computer, and wrote an entire game in assembly language (reinventing the concept of linking object files in the process) which I then sold. While I was in high school. I also designed and built an expansion board for my computer with only the IC technical manuals.

By college I was doing real video game consulting work.

I had one awesome friend who was also a good programmer, and we lived and breathed programming together. But beyond that, I was on my own.

It can happen without unfettered Internet access at 9 years old.

Heh, it's funny you mention that, because I always had a deeply rooted philosophical belief that computers are tools, and a properly configured computing device is an "extension" of oneself. Not in some crazy cyberpunk sense of extension, but same as regular, old-school tools are customizable to better suit the user's hand, size or strength, so we can perform better with them, as if the tool was a part of our body.

Sure, it does require a certain amount of know-how, but even at the barest there's some degree of organizational feature like moving launcher icons so you can reach for a tool without jumping through hoops. Every "papercut" removed helps.

For example, this week I had a bit of a need to get text from some images. It's short enough bits of text that can be typed by hand, but that's annoying, so I set up a couple scripts to get the text via OCR and copy it to clipboard, after massaging the input a little bit using imageMagick, and now I can quickly retrieve it with ridiculously small % of failure (and it's usually very obvious), and works with Japanese and everything. At least half a minute of back-and-forth was turned into a keypress and a verification step (I usually double-check what I type so that step was going to happen anyway). It's a tiny thing and not even remotely my finest work in the field, but everything adds up. Got lots of homemade tools to do pretty much everything I do regularly, and properly commented so it serves as a bit of a personal repo of arcane tricks and best practices. I even recoded a few tools in pure bash or awk/gawk so I can carry them around as fallbacks, which allows me to use those things in obsolete or busybox-tier systems.

At this point I might as well admit it's a bit of a hobby. Having artistic skills also allows me to "brand" my system with custom decorations and of course allow me to draw comfortably by having most automation available from my left hand.

Anyway, sorry for the long personal post, but the point is to use my experience as example of the things the computer can do for you if you are willing to put some time into making it behave the way you want, the way it suits your own usages, experiences and abilities and of course environment. Maybe all you need to be happily productive are a few custom document templates and rearranging some icons, or you do complex coding tasks that can be automated to save you from lots of busywork, or you are working with faulty hardware or unstable internet connection that requires some babysitting that can be automated with a few scripts. I'm not saying it's something everyone should know, but it might be useful for people to openly discuss their use cases and experiences, someone might have a recommendation or trick available and everyone wins. It's a lot like working in the kitchen if you think about it.

How can a child fall into programming when the computer yells at you, with cryptic messages, uncomprehensible for a child, moreso since I was French-speaking only. “ERROR!” It even accuses you: “YOU are about to reformat this DISK. Do you want to proceed?” (7-year-old me looking up “proceed” in the dictionary, missing “reformat”. Ah, fdisk, so many nights crying that I had lost my computer).

But, speaking from experience: At least it’s your fault. You can do something about it.

Now compare to the sand pit at school: You play marbles with a girl, if she loses she goes crying to the teacher. It’s not your fault, you followed the rules, teacher tells you off, ah, gotta learn the rules of life. “Girls have cooties” is the most funny self-reflection on my childhood. There was no way as a child to learn navigating that complex rules of social precedence, implicit expectations, social cues, untold obvious rules. Even today: I’m bad at office politics, so I’m a CEO and make a million a year.

At least, with computers, when it doesn’t work: It’s my fault. I can do something about it. Same with business. It’s my fault. A provider defects? Still my fault. Economic crisis? Still more my fault than playing by the rules in the sandpit and being told off.

But people? I need five times my IQ.

No they can't. Anyone can try, most will fail, because few are suited for it.

different for sure, most people use computers as spectators, computers happen to them; of course they can enjoy it, just as you can enjoy music without making music.

But sometimes I feel musicians appreciate music in a different way, same as woodworkers appreciate a nice table in a different way.

Reminds me of 'What I can not create, I do not understand' (Feynman's last board), but not entirely in the way he meant it.

Understanding computer systems requires both cultural and institutional knowledge. Not all intelligent people possess this knowledge. My grandpa is a great example. He’s a retired English professor and has deep knowledge of literature and the structure of English language. He’s still incredibly sharp but he cant use a computer to same his damn life.

> as an industry we'd rather tell ourselves that it's all so impossibly hard and beyond the grasp of the common person rather than admit that we just suck at explaining things and educating people outside our bubbles.

Using computers is very hard. I think you are underestimating the amount of time you and others have spent learning “basic” computer skills (email, word processing, web browsing, etc) that many haven’t had the time or opportunity build. I started learning how to use a computer when I was a little kid, maybe 5. over the course of my childhood I built up those skills to the point where they endemic and felt simple, even natural. These things take time and purpose and many very smart people do not get the opportunity or reason to build these skills

Not entirely true. While I've learned as a kid many of the insides and outsides of my ZX Spectrum clone, from the limited info I could gather and from tinkering, I tried to learn about most complex systems later, as much as I could.

I learned x86 assembly under MS DOS, I learned writing device drivers in C for Windows, I learned a bit of Linux system programming in University, I learned a bit of OpenGL and shaders, I learned a few bits about hardware, I learned about logical gates like NAND and simple digital circuitry. And those are basic things I've learned long time ago.

Having low level knowledge is useful but also having a higher level knowledge. I think concepts like algorithms, parallel and concurrent programming, formal languages and automata theory, cryptography, statistics, machine learning and other high level stuff I've came across in University were equally useful.

I tackled many areas of programming, desktop software, device drivers, embedded software, video games, mobile apps, web front-end, web backend. Now I am building microservice based apps with Kubernetes and Azure. I am thinking of brushing up my knowledge on ML.

I liked pretty much everything I did and I approached everything with a learning mentality.

One can't learn everything like in the '80s but one can learn a lot of things to keep him entertained and help him accomplish great things while having enough knowledge of how things work under the hood.

I am probably not an expert in any one field of programming but know enough things to be useful in many areas. I rather like being a jack of all trades than highly specialized because there is more than one thing that interests me and I am always curious about different things and I like to learn. That being said, being an expert in one thing is not a bad place to be and experts can be paid a lot.

No, people care only to have somebody that cares around, so that they can solve their issues. Do you think people with macbooks etc never encounter issues with software/hardware and all just work automatically always without having to care about anything? This is an illusion, and in the end of the day you (or someone) has to put the extra work.

It is similar to what happened to electronic and other devices through the years, everything becomes more user friendly but also more complex and opaque the same time, so younger generations were getting more and more clueless how these devices worked. I do not know how things will go now, but I see the same trend as computers, I do not see the older generation becoming technologically illiterate luddites (ok I do mot use tik tok so maybe that makes me one) as much as I see that the the big part of the younger generations not knowing much more than touching stuff on a screen. I do not see that the proportion of more technically adept people increased at all. But yeah, maybe there is some new neurotechnology thing or whatever at some point that changes things, but not something I see with present tech.

General problem-solving ability seems like a synonym for fluid intelligence, which is not very malleable. Learning to code, on the other hand, is possible with effort. I learned to program in the 4th grade, with videos and books I myself bought, without having internet access. (I could use dial-up if I really needed it, but it was expensive and slow, so I used it very sparingly; I don't remember how much, but around 5 hours per month seems an upper bound.) I had no support whatsoever from anyone (except that my dad paid for the books and videos), my mom only let me use my computer for like 3 hours a week (shared between gaming and doing anything else), my computer was old and slow, ... . Now, I sure have a high IQ, but I doubt that we couldn't have 20% of the urban population reach some basic computer literacy when they are 24 years old. Heck, calculus is known by more people than coding. Most non-poor people waste 16+ years of their life in K12 and undergrad, and learn very few useful skills. Imagine what would happen if we taught people a curriculum that did something other than pure signalling.

Ex teacher here:

Some people really really seems to have a harder time with certain subjects than others.

I took pride in being a good teacher but I have experienced one person who - despite being normal and being able to keep a normal job - just couldn't grasp the basics of computers.

And by basics I mean:

Connect power cable, press power button, wait for Windows to load, type password and open Internet explorer.

It would stop somewhere in between there each time.

There is nothing wrong with that just like there is nothing wrong with me never being able to become a long haul truck driver (falls asleep), pilot (partially colour blind), or soccer star (hopeless).

> but it's the enjoyment I derive from these things that I believe is the difference between some people and I.

Thus is huge as well. Possibly also underappreciated.