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I am happy that I grew up in the golden age of computing - people say it was the 80's, but being a "90's" kid, we had classes from HTML w/ dreamweaver, how to m

I am happy that I grew up in the golden age of computing - people say it was the 80's, but being a "90's" kid, we had classes from HTML w/ dreamweaver, how to modify/break windows 95/98 --- In fact in NYC, my elementary school had keyboard class where you'd learn to type and general proficiency w/ a computer. In Florida, middle school photoshop, dreamweaver, fireworks and even access database. High school had C++ class - from what I believe was a fired Compaq programmer, needless to say it sucked but gave me a foundation. Meanwhile this was also the time where you needed to know a bit of HTML to modify your Geocities, Angelfire, Neopets (middle school days) to Myspace profile. Facebook came in and removed that whole layer of customization - Windows XP was really stable and besides malware no one needed to really know how to fix their computer. Then if you were into Video game culture, you had to learn how to solder to modify consoles with modchips, how to burn a CD, and generally modify and configure OS settings from IRQ to adding a DVDRW. Same with pirating videos, there was no youtube - maybe you'd get lucky and find an FTP server that hosted videos but even then you'd had codecs. Default, Windows didn't include Divx, MPEG2, etc - just WMV/WMA. Same with burning an MP3 to CD. Nowadays I feel like a SRE/Sysadmin hack, but man then again I know my way enough a system, can program lazily and hold my own with people who consider themselves senior devs, architects etc from MSFT, NIST, SpaceX -- It's nice. Maybe I do know something.

non-entity 7y ago
I normally roll my eyes at "wrong generation" stuff, but holy shit it seems like it would have been really fun to have grown up or even worked in the industry during the golden age.
- jimmux 7y ago
  As someone who was messing around with computers back then, I'm jealous of kids who are getting serious about this stuff now. I was lucky to have a computer at all to learn on. If I did anything remotely hacky, I would be warned about breaking an expensive and irreplaceable piece of equipment. There was no help or documentation. No Internet to download the most basic of resources. If I didn't stumble upon HyperCard at 12 years old and figure out what it was through trial and error, I may never have got the spark of curiosity that put me on the path. Some of the projects that exist now would have blown my little mind back then. People are reverse engineering my favourite old games and making them better! Insanity! And free 3D game engines! Using a nicely configured IDE with autocomplete, format on save, linting, etc. allows the mind be so liberated from the tedious details and really focus on the actual problem. You can actually do interesting things in JavaScript. It's a world apart from when typing <blink> tags into Notepad was enough to impress your friends.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    Completely agree. Kids these days ... :) I had my own Windows 95 PC (120 MHz Packard Bell) that I saved up lawn money for (my dad agreed to pay 50% for my first computer). I wanted to learn programming, but found the C and C++ books my parents bought me to be really dense. So I taught myself QBasic (and TI Basic on my TI-83). If I had had anything like the youtube videos, online tutorials, blogs, Stack Overflow, etc. that modern folks have, high school would have been completely different. I have a friend who taught himself the DOS prompt on his parents' computer when he was in early high school. He had no access to any materials (this was before the internet was available); he literally typed every possible combination of letters and discovered the commands (dir, cls, move, del, ren, etc.) and tried to infer what they did.
    - bashwizard 7y ago
      I remember my dad being fed up with me asking "hey dad, can I play Woffenstone?" (yes, I pronounced it like that since I was a 11 year old kid from sweden back then) so he gave me the DOS 5.0 manual and said "here you go kiddo, you can play as much as you want when you've learned how to start the game by yourself). That's where it all started for me and I was always on the computer whenever I could until my dad got fed up with me installing games and uninstalling his stuff so he password locked it in the BIOS. So I had to figure out how to bypass the BIOS password which I eventually did by just guessing the password. Now I could play games and mess around on the computer whenever he wasn't at home but I had to hide all my games so that he didn't realize that I was using the computer whenever he wasn't at home. Eventually he did realize that so he changed the password and uninstalled all my games so once again I had to guess the password and this time I put my own BIOS password on it and all hell broke loose. And that's where the hacker mentality started and sooner than later my dad bought a new computer and gave the old one to me. Good times.
      - TimTheTinker 7y ago
        Great story, thanks for sharing :) There was a Windows for Workgroups computer lab at my high school. They had a DOS-based login, but accessing the DOS prompt from Windows was disabled. At one point, someone figured out that the login screen could be bypassed by pressing Ctrl+Break; the teacher found out and disabled that particular keystroke. But after hours of experimenting, I figured out that Alt+3 sends an ASCII character (0x3) that has the same effect. So we were back to playing games in the lab after hours -- they were often hidden in a folder named Alt+255 which looked like a space in DOS but was invisible to the File Manager in Windows. Good times :)
awad 7y ago
This encapsulates my coming of age in computing perfectly, to an eerie level of specificity. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
- akiselev 7y ago
  Down to the Neopets tables and divs... I remember making a lot of in game currency for building out people's pages. I don't even remember any details about the core mechanics of the game but that part stuck with me.
  - asdff 7y ago
    All I remember is you had to take care of your animals pretty regularly. Coming home from vacation would be a mad dash to the computer to feed your starving virtual pets. Kind of traumatic, in hind sight.

non-entity 7y ago

I normally roll my eyes at "wrong generation" stuff, but holy shit it seems like it would have been really fun to have grown up or even worked in the industry during the golden age.

jimmux 7y ago
As someone who was messing around with computers back then, I'm jealous of kids who are getting serious about this stuff now. I was lucky to have a computer at all to learn on. If I did anything remotely hacky, I would be warned about breaking an expensive and irreplaceable piece of equipment. There was no help or documentation. No Internet to download the most basic of resources. If I didn't stumble upon HyperCard at 12 years old and figure out what it was through trial and error, I may never have got the spark of curiosity that put me on the path. Some of the projects that exist now would have blown my little mind back then. People are reverse engineering my favourite old games and making them better! Insanity! And free 3D game engines! Using a nicely configured IDE with autocomplete, format on save, linting, etc. allows the mind be so liberated from the tedious details and really focus on the actual problem. You can actually do interesting things in JavaScript. It's a world apart from when typing <blink> tags into Notepad was enough to impress your friends.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Completely agree. Kids these days ... :) I had my own Windows 95 PC (120 MHz Packard Bell) that I saved up lawn money for (my dad agreed to pay 50% for my first computer). I wanted to learn programming, but found the C and C++ books my parents bought me to be really dense. So I taught myself QBasic (and TI Basic on my TI-83). If I had had anything like the youtube videos, online tutorials, blogs, Stack Overflow, etc. that modern folks have, high school would have been completely different. I have a friend who taught himself the DOS prompt on his parents' computer when he was in early high school. He had no access to any materials (this was before the internet was available); he literally typed every possible combination of letters and discovered the commands (dir, cls, move, del, ren, etc.) and tried to infer what they did.
  - bashwizard 7y ago
    I remember my dad being fed up with me asking "hey dad, can I play Woffenstone?" (yes, I pronounced it like that since I was a 11 year old kid from sweden back then) so he gave me the DOS 5.0 manual and said "here you go kiddo, you can play as much as you want when you've learned how to start the game by yourself). That's where it all started for me and I was always on the computer whenever I could until my dad got fed up with me installing games and uninstalling his stuff so he password locked it in the BIOS. So I had to figure out how to bypass the BIOS password which I eventually did by just guessing the password. Now I could play games and mess around on the computer whenever he wasn't at home but I had to hide all my games so that he didn't realize that I was using the computer whenever he wasn't at home. Eventually he did realize that so he changed the password and uninstalled all my games so once again I had to guess the password and this time I put my own BIOS password on it and all hell broke loose. And that's where the hacker mentality started and sooner than later my dad bought a new computer and gave the old one to me. Good times.
    - TimTheTinker 7y ago
      Great story, thanks for sharing :) There was a Windows for Workgroups computer lab at my high school. They had a DOS-based login, but accessing the DOS prompt from Windows was disabled. At one point, someone figured out that the login screen could be bypassed by pressing Ctrl+Break; the teacher found out and disabled that particular keystroke. But after hours of experimenting, I figured out that Alt+3 sends an ASCII character (0x3) that has the same effect. So we were back to playing games in the lab after hours -- they were often hidden in a folder named Alt+255 which looked like a space in DOS but was invisible to the File Manager in Windows. Good times :)

awad 7y ago

This encapsulates my coming of age in computing perfectly, to an eerie level of specificity. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

akiselev 7y ago
Down to the Neopets tables and divs... I remember making a lot of in game currency for building out people's pages. I don't even remember any details about the core mechanics of the game but that part stuck with me.
- asdff 7y ago
  All I remember is you had to take care of your animals pretty regularly. Coming home from vacation would be a mad dash to the computer to feed your starving virtual pets. Kind of traumatic, in hind sight.