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Steve Woz talks about this in his autobiography. That basically, today’s generation is mostly missing an experience he was lucky to have: a complete understandi

by gdubs 7y ago

Steve Woz talks about this in his autobiography. That basically, today’s generation is mostly missing an experience he was lucky to have: a complete understanding of a machine and all of its parts.

dragontamer 7y ago
I respectfully disagree. Arduino can be fully understood from the ground up: from voltage-levels, to the clock, to the simple assembly language (and compiler). The AtMega328p is an incredibly simple design... rugged enough to withstand a variety of voltages (1.8V to 5V inputs), and even able to be used on a breadboard. Even ignoring Arduino, the "toy computers" that people make today are Minecraft Redstone, Factorio circuits, and Dwarf Fortress river-contraptions. Complete computer architectures built up from the fundamentals for the video-game computer scientists of the future. People play games and use toys because its possible to understand everything. EDIT: Oh, and the TI-83 calculator. Overpriced obsolete garbage of a calculator, but since its the "standard" calculator of High School, plenty of children will get the opportunity to really learn that machine if they so choose. There's something to be said about the TI-83 community keeping that Z80 chip so well documented and alive...
- Sileni 7y ago
  Except you have no reason to use those things, unless you specifically go out of your way. In Woz's day, you HAD to work on that level to work with budget systems. The same opportunity may exist, but the same motivation does not.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    > Except you have no reason to use those things, unless you specifically go out of your way. In Woz's day, you HAD to work on that level to work with budget systems. In Woz's day, most people were playing outside yelling "NERD" at the people who were working on computers. No one had to stay inside to practice coding or working with the machine back then. I think people forget how antisocial it was considered to actually work on computers back then. I got the tail end of it as a 90s kid, but it was probably much worse in the 70s and 80s. -------- In any case, I'd say its cheaper and easier to know about things today than it was back then. Sure, select communities would be photocopying the Unix source code (ex: Lions Commentary on Unix), but you still had to hope such tomes existed in your local library. It wasn't like today where you can just download obscure documentation on chips for free and instantly. Do you want to know how AMD GPUs work? Just read the docs. https://gpuopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/RDNA_Shader_ISA_5August2019.pdf https://gpuopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/RDNA_Shader_I... You used to have to pay money to get printouts of such docs. I'm pretty sure my local library wasn't holding holding the processor manuals or schematics for the Amiga back then. Realistically speaking, if its the 80s, you were getting by on the Commodore 64 User's guide alone. https://www.lemon64.com/manual/ https://www.lemon64.com/manual/ Frankly: There's far more information available today for Rasp. Pi or Arduinos than the 192-page Commodore 64 book (as influential as the Commodore 64 book was... it was still one beginner-level book).
    - basementcat 7y ago
      The C64 Programmer's Reference Guide was available at many bookstores; is the GPU of the Raspberry Pi documented?
      - dragontamer 7y ago
        https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCore-IV-3d-Graphics-Pipeline https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCor... Documented as much as Lion's documentation on Unix. Gotta dance around NDAs an all, but they had to deal with that in the 80s as well.
        monocasa 7y ago
        And mean, there's no public source for the videocore processor. You can't get it even with a wink and a nod like you could with Lion's commentary.
        dragontamer 7y ago
        The Lions commentary was basically a work of literature for the 80s developer. Very few people were running DEC-PDP11s in the 80s, you couldn't really run the code. Don't get me wrong: the data in the Lions book inspired later operating systems and is very important. But its a very difficult read, ill-suited for the general audience. The code does NOT run outside of DEC-PDP11 (and almost no one had that computer by the 80s, nor the compilers or tools needed to actually generate the code), so it really was just a work of literature and OS-study more-so than actual technical documentation. ------- In contrast, you can buy a complete Rasp. Pi system for $35, with a myriad of books and materials on programming (Python, C, Java, even GPU-coding). Then you can buy an Arduino for $20, and a breadboard kit (wires, breadboard, resistors, etc. etc.) under $100 and get cracking today. Complete understanding of the machine, and very cheap and accessible. Even the Commodore 64 was $500+, in 80s money (so inflation adjust as appropriate). ------- The 2010s is way better for learning programming than the 80s ever was. Not only is computing respected hobby these days... but its so cheap and information is freely available.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    Eh, embedded, robotics, mechatronics and the things we do with it are way bigger than the nascent computing industry ever was. More people "have" to play with that stuff than ever had to earlier. And we have better tools and it's more fun.
EvanAnderson 7y ago
I got a chance to ask Woz a question at a speaking engagement. I asked him what he thought about the fact that I don't own my IOS device like I owned my Apple II computers-- that I can't tinker with the software and hardware and do what I please with it. His reply, which I don't recall verbatim, was to the effect of: "We have to have locked-down devices today so we can have security." It made me very, very sad.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  Man that's a lame response. I really have to wonder if we didn't just get incredibly lucky that the initial culture of hackers that built the open source community and internet infrastructure was one that was very non-commercialized. I really have to wonder if all the companies that are thriving now on locked down hardware and proprietary systems, the same ones pushing everything to their proprietary cloud platforms would even be here and able to do half of what they do thanks to that culture of selflessness. If it didn't already exist and have such momentum, I'm really skeptical that anyone would reproduce the concept of free and open source software in today's day and age.
- dharmab 7y ago
  I mean, your Apple II wasn't constantly connected to a network full of hostile actors and executing code downloaded over the network without explicit confirmation.

by gdubs 7y ago

Steve Woz talks about this in his autobiography. That basically, today’s generation is mostly missing an experience he was lucky to have: a complete understanding of a machine and all of its parts.

dragontamer 7y ago

I respectfully disagree. Arduino can be fully understood from the ground up: from voltage-levels, to the clock, to the simple assembly language (and compiler). The AtMega328p is an incredibly simple design... rugged enough to withstand a variety of voltages (1.8V to 5V inputs), and even able to be used on a breadboard. Even ignoring Arduino, the "toy computers" that people make today are Minecraft Redstone, Factorio circuits, and Dwarf Fortress river-contraptions. Complete computer architectures built up from the fundamentals for the video-game computer scientists of the future. People play games and use toys because its possible to understand everything. EDIT: Oh, and the TI-83 calculator. Overpriced obsolete garbage of a calculator, but since its the "standard" calculator of High School, plenty of children will get the opportunity to really learn that machine if they so choose. There's something to be said about the TI-83 community keeping that Z80 chip so well documented and alive...

Sileni 7y ago
Except you have no reason to use those things, unless you specifically go out of your way. In Woz's day, you HAD to work on that level to work with budget systems. The same opportunity may exist, but the same motivation does not.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  > Except you have no reason to use those things, unless you specifically go out of your way. In Woz's day, you HAD to work on that level to work with budget systems. In Woz's day, most people were playing outside yelling "NERD" at the people who were working on computers. No one had to stay inside to practice coding or working with the machine back then. I think people forget how antisocial it was considered to actually work on computers back then. I got the tail end of it as a 90s kid, but it was probably much worse in the 70s and 80s. -------- In any case, I'd say its cheaper and easier to know about things today than it was back then. Sure, select communities would be photocopying the Unix source code (ex: Lions Commentary on Unix), but you still had to hope such tomes existed in your local library. It wasn't like today where you can just download obscure documentation on chips for free and instantly. Do you want to know how AMD GPUs work? Just read the docs. https://gpuopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/RDNA_Shader_ISA_5August2019.pdf https://gpuopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/RDNA_Shader_I... You used to have to pay money to get printouts of such docs. I'm pretty sure my local library wasn't holding holding the processor manuals or schematics for the Amiga back then. Realistically speaking, if its the 80s, you were getting by on the Commodore 64 User's guide alone. https://www.lemon64.com/manual/ https://www.lemon64.com/manual/ Frankly: There's far more information available today for Rasp. Pi or Arduinos than the 192-page Commodore 64 book (as influential as the Commodore 64 book was... it was still one beginner-level book).
  - basementcat 7y ago
    The C64 Programmer's Reference Guide was available at many bookstores; is the GPU of the Raspberry Pi documented?
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCore-IV-3d-Graphics-Pipeline https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCor... Documented as much as Lion's documentation on Unix. Gotta dance around NDAs an all, but they had to deal with that in the 80s as well.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        And mean, there's no public source for the videocore processor. You can't get it even with a wink and a nod like you could with Lion's commentary.
        dragontamer 7y ago
        The Lions commentary was basically a work of literature for the 80s developer. Very few people were running DEC-PDP11s in the 80s, you couldn't really run the code. Don't get me wrong: the data in the Lions book inspired later operating systems and is very important. But its a very difficult read, ill-suited for the general audience. The code does NOT run outside of DEC-PDP11 (and almost no one had that computer by the 80s, nor the compilers or tools needed to actually generate the code), so it really was just a work of literature and OS-study more-so than actual technical documentation. ------- In contrast, you can buy a complete Rasp. Pi system for $35, with a myriad of books and materials on programming (Python, C, Java, even GPU-coding). Then you can buy an Arduino for $20, and a breadboard kit (wires, breadboard, resistors, etc. etc.) under $100 and get cracking today. Complete understanding of the machine, and very cheap and accessible. Even the Commodore 64 was $500+, in 80s money (so inflation adjust as appropriate). ------- The 2010s is way better for learning programming than the 80s ever was. Not only is computing respected hobby these days... but its so cheap and information is freely available.
- mlyle 7y ago
  Eh, embedded, robotics, mechatronics and the things we do with it are way bigger than the nascent computing industry ever was. More people "have" to play with that stuff than ever had to earlier. And we have better tools and it's more fun.

EvanAnderson 7y ago

I got a chance to ask Woz a question at a speaking engagement. I asked him what he thought about the fact that I don't own my IOS device like I owned my Apple II computers-- that I can't tinker with the software and hardware and do what I please with it. His reply, which I don't recall verbatim, was to the effect of: "We have to have locked-down devices today so we can have security." It made me very, very sad.

Enginerrrd 7y ago
Man that's a lame response. I really have to wonder if we didn't just get incredibly lucky that the initial culture of hackers that built the open source community and internet infrastructure was one that was very non-commercialized. I really have to wonder if all the companies that are thriving now on locked down hardware and proprietary systems, the same ones pushing everything to their proprietary cloud platforms would even be here and able to do half of what they do thanks to that culture of selflessness. If it didn't already exist and have such momentum, I'm really skeptical that anyone would reproduce the concept of free and open source software in today's day and age.
dharmab 7y ago
I mean, your Apple II wasn't constantly connected to a network full of hostile actors and executing code downloaded over the network without explicit confirmation.