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I borderline take offense to this lol. I first got interested in computers and eventually programming by playing with custom ROMs for my Windows Mobile phone w

I borderline take offense to this lol. I first got interested in computers and eventually programming by playing with custom ROMs for my Windows Mobile phone when I was in college, circa 2006. If it wasn't for smartphones, I never would have taken a networking class (I was a radio/TV major) and realized I was very interested in what I could make a computer do (I'm a software engineer now). I think that the kids-these-days who aren't hacking their smartphones are the same kind of people who didn't do much more than watch TV in years past.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
I got interested in computers because I wanted something to play games on, that's all I cared about... and my cousin wisely told my parents to get me an Amiga 500 instead of what I wanted. It came with a lot of manuals which I devoured, and though I didn't program much on the Amiga, I owe a lot to all that (most importantly a point of comparison -- it's not like I haven't experienced all the stuff that came later, and I know I missed out on an even more "empowered" time in the 80s, I barely just catched the tail end of a golden age). https://archive.org/details/commodoreamigamanuals https://archive.org/details/commodoreamigamanuals Glorious. Sure, most kids who had an Amiga didn't get that deeply into it, e.g. a friend of mine who also had an Amiga never seems to use his computer for much more than playing games and watching movies to this day. But for anyone interested to dive deeper, the doors were wide open and and as encouraging and honest to newbies as humanly possible. Even my non-technical kid friends knew how to load up a neat module in protracker. None of that focus on quality and openness for the sake of quality and doing the right thing was to the detriment of the "casuals", and a polar opposite of a world of stuff like miniminzed JS that does nothing interesting, smartphone apps that half-ass what a website could do, games that just rehash and dumb down the same shit to keep people consuming. The shift from tools and variety to mere consuming and fads is rather crass, come to think about it.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "I think that the kids-these-days who aren't hacking their smartphones are the same kind of people who didn't do much more than watch TV in years past." True. But most people never took the TV to the toilet with them. Yes, It's the same type of person. But today there's no norms to discourage usage (e.g., most people didn't watch TV at work) and thus ever less self-regulation. Note: I'm not longing for the good ol' days. Just wanting to add some clarity to the comparison.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
  > people never took the TV to the toilet with them. Well, that would have avoided those everybody-flushing-during-breaks troubles said to have existed in TV's golden days ...

PavlovsCat 8y ago

I got interested in computers because I wanted something to play games on, that's all I cared about... and my cousin wisely told my parents to get me an Amiga 500 instead of what I wanted. It came with a lot of manuals which I devoured, and though I didn't program much on the Amiga, I owe a lot to all that (most importantly a point of comparison -- it's not like I haven't experienced all the stuff that came later, and I know I missed out on an even more "empowered" time in the 80s, I barely just catched the tail end of a golden age). https://archive.org/details/commodoreamigamanuals https://archive.org/details/commodoreamigamanuals Glorious. Sure, most kids who had an Amiga didn't get that deeply into it, e.g. a friend of mine who also had an Amiga never seems to use his computer for much more than playing games and watching movies to this day. But for anyone interested to dive deeper, the doors were wide open and and as encouraging and honest to newbies as humanly possible. Even my non-technical kid friends knew how to load up a neat module in protracker. None of that focus on quality and openness for the sake of quality and doing the right thing was to the detriment of the "casuals", and a polar opposite of a world of stuff like miniminzed JS that does nothing interesting, smartphone apps that half-ass what a website could do, games that just rehash and dumb down the same shit to keep people consuming. The shift from tools and variety to mere consuming and fads is rather crass, come to think about it.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "I think that the kids-these-days who aren't hacking their smartphones are the same kind of people who didn't do much more than watch TV in years past." True. But most people never took the TV to the toilet with them. Yes, It's the same type of person. But today there's no norms to discourage usage (e.g., most people didn't watch TV at work) and thus ever less self-regulation. Note: I'm not longing for the good ol' days. Just wanting to add some clarity to the comparison.

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
> people never took the TV to the toilet with them. Well, that would have avoided those everybody-flushing-during-breaks troubles said to have existed in TV's golden days ...