4 ms·

There is no old grizzled sarge because personal computers have been out for less than 20 years.

by user5994461 6y ago

confidantlake 6y ago
PCs came out in the early 2000s?
- user5994461 6y ago
  Sounds about right. Could say late 1990s if you were in the right location in an affluent family.
  - analog31 6y ago
    I started college in 1982, majoring in math and physics. The professors all had personal computers on their desks. I bought myself one for under $1000 the next year. By the time I graduated, even the computer science professors were using personal computers, though student assignments were still done on the mainframe.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      Where were you living?
      - analog31 6y ago
        I grew up in Michigan and went to one of the many small liberal arts colleges in the state.
  - acdha 6y ago
    You’re off by a couple of decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers You could be thinking of “personal computer with Internet access”? That’s closer timing as long as you want something more open / capable than the various dialup services which were popular with personal computer users starting in the 1980s.
  - retrac 6y ago
    I did some searching. Most stats suggest that by 1985, more than 10% of American households, and a slight majority of small businesses, had a personal computer. By 2001, it's 60% and nearly 100%. I agree with the others. You're about two decades too late in your estimate.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    In San Diego, in 1987, I attended college using Pell grants from the US government because my family was considered below the poverty line. They provided enough money to cover tuition, books, and room and board, but I lived at home and used the room-and-board money to buy an IBM PC AT clone. This was not my first personal computer, but it was the first that literally has "Personal Computer" in the name, and is more than ten years prior to your claim.
  - leothecool 6y ago
    The TRS-80 was $600 in 1980. That's still less than $2000 in today's dollars, in the same ballpark as a macbook, and around the same price as a VCR.
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Around ‘93 or ‘94 is when we got our first home PC. We were no where close to affluent.
michael1999 6y ago
MS DOS was 1981. I got my vic-20 in 1984. But fair point, the actual numbers employed were tiny compared to current needs. Average experience is thin out there. The old timers clump, both in firms and geographically.
joefourier 6y ago
Is this an attempt at humour I’m not understanding? The eponymous Personal Computer came out in 1981, and it came in an already thriving market with the likes of the Apple ][, Commodore Pet, TI-99, etc. Heck some of the essays from Paul Graham date from the 90s.
- user5994461 6y ago
  It's hyperbole to illustrate that looking for people with 40 years of experience in personal computer is like looking for people with 10 years of kubernetes experience. You don't see any because they don't exist. Well, there might be a handful stacked in the place the thing was initially created (they've probably long moved on though). HN happens to be heavily centered around the valley and Apple/Microsoft, bad luck. Consider that the rest of the world can easily be a decade behind the valley.
  - joefourier 6y ago
    I'm not sure what experience in "personal computing" would entail as opposed to specific systems like Kubernetes. You could find someone with 40+ years of experience in Unix, C, or writing 6502 assembly code, with varying degrees of relevance to modern day work. Someone who has 40 years of experience with the 8051 or PIC microcontroller could conceivably be useful today, so if you wanted your grizzled old sarge, you could have them, assuming you were willing to pay enough money or had an interesting enough project.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    There are many, many, many people with close to 40 years of PC experience. The k8s example is not analogous because the set of people with adequate experience is 0, while the set for PC experience is much much much higher than 0. 20 years? You are literally MULTIPLE decades off.
jfk13 6y ago
That's...a little off. I started out writing programs on my school's Commodore PET around 40 years ago. Some people might regard me as grizzled, I guess.
pwinnski 6y ago
TIL that my IBM PC AT clone in 1987 was not a personal computer.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Better still. Your modern PC retains backwards compatibility and emulates hardware quirks of this "not a PC".
OliverJones 6y ago
Yeah. I started out in 1969 as an intern doing electrocardiogram analysis on a CDC 8090. It had four banks of sixteen KiB of twelve-bit core memory (yeah, little magnetic washers threaded onto a square screen of wires). Obvs 8090 assembler is now useless as a skill. But the thinking and troubleshooting skills needed to make that stuff work? Still use them every day.
necheffa 6y ago
Lolwut? Personal computers have definitely been around _longer_ than just 20 years. Maybe not 40, but it is ludicrous to suggest _less_ than 20 years.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
You should take a look at how personal computers were affecting the economy in the 1980s. Maybe the wikipedia article on the Digital Revolution [0], starting on the section "1969–1989: Invention of the Internet, rise of home computers" [1], or the section "Rise in digital technology use of computers, 1980–2020" [2]. > In developed nations, computers achieved semi-ubiquity during the 1980s as they made their way into schools, homes, business, and industry. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution#1969%E2%80%931989:_Invention_of_the_Internet,_rise_of_home_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution#1969%E2%80%... [2] Rise in digital technology use of computers, 1980–2020
microtherion 6y ago
May I ask when the place you grew up in acquired indoor plumbing? Apple was incorporated in 1976. What do you think they did for the first 25 years of their existence?
bregma 6y ago
He he he. I'm much closer to 60 than to 50, and I played with my first "personal computer" (original Apple ][) in the late 1970s. I have over 40 years of experience with personal computers, servers, and embedded. I've been through bubbles, I've seen the pendulum swing from centralization to distributed several times. I've seen industry behemoths rise and fall. I work hard to maintain a grizzled appearance, and I am an industry veteran. I have encountered ageism (and sexism, and racism) in the industry: it's like mould in blue cheese. It all comes down to the biggest problem in the industry, and probably outside the industry: arrogance.

There is no old grizzled sarge because personal computers have been out for less than 20 years.

confidantlake 6y ago

PCs came out in the early 2000s?

user5994461 6y ago
Sounds about right. Could say late 1990s if you were in the right location in an affluent family.
- analog31 6y ago
  I started college in 1982, majoring in math and physics. The professors all had personal computers on their desks. I bought myself one for under $1000 the next year. By the time I graduated, even the computer science professors were using personal computers, though student assignments were still done on the mainframe.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Where were you living?
    - analog31 6y ago
      I grew up in Michigan and went to one of the many small liberal arts colleges in the state.
- acdha 6y ago
  You’re off by a couple of decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers You could be thinking of “personal computer with Internet access”? That’s closer timing as long as you want something more open / capable than the various dialup services which were popular with personal computer users starting in the 1980s.
- retrac 6y ago
  I did some searching. Most stats suggest that by 1985, more than 10% of American households, and a slight majority of small businesses, had a personal computer. By 2001, it's 60% and nearly 100%. I agree with the others. You're about two decades too late in your estimate.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  In San Diego, in 1987, I attended college using Pell grants from the US government because my family was considered below the poverty line. They provided enough money to cover tuition, books, and room and board, but I lived at home and used the room-and-board money to buy an IBM PC AT clone. This was not my first personal computer, but it was the first that literally has "Personal Computer" in the name, and is more than ten years prior to your claim.
- leothecool 6y ago
  The TRS-80 was $600 in 1980. That's still less than $2000 in today's dollars, in the same ballpark as a macbook, and around the same price as a VCR.
- sethammons 6y ago
  Around ‘93 or ‘94 is when we got our first home PC. We were no where close to affluent.

michael1999 6y ago

MS DOS was 1981. I got my vic-20 in 1984. But fair point, the actual numbers employed were tiny compared to current needs. Average experience is thin out there. The old timers clump, both in firms and geographically.

joefourier 6y ago

Is this an attempt at humour I’m not understanding? The eponymous Personal Computer came out in 1981, and it came in an already thriving market with the likes of the Apple ][, Commodore Pet, TI-99, etc. Heck some of the essays from Paul Graham date from the 90s.

user5994461 6y ago
It's hyperbole to illustrate that looking for people with 40 years of experience in personal computer is like looking for people with 10 years of kubernetes experience. You don't see any because they don't exist. Well, there might be a handful stacked in the place the thing was initially created (they've probably long moved on though). HN happens to be heavily centered around the valley and Apple/Microsoft, bad luck. Consider that the rest of the world can easily be a decade behind the valley.
- joefourier 6y ago
  I'm not sure what experience in "personal computing" would entail as opposed to specific systems like Kubernetes. You could find someone with 40+ years of experience in Unix, C, or writing 6502 assembly code, with varying degrees of relevance to modern day work. Someone who has 40 years of experience with the 8051 or PIC microcontroller could conceivably be useful today, so if you wanted your grizzled old sarge, you could have them, assuming you were willing to pay enough money or had an interesting enough project.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  There are many, many, many people with close to 40 years of PC experience. The k8s example is not analogous because the set of people with adequate experience is 0, while the set for PC experience is much much much higher than 0. 20 years? You are literally MULTIPLE decades off.

jfk13 6y ago

That's...a little off. I started out writing programs on my school's Commodore PET around 40 years ago. Some people might regard me as grizzled, I guess.

pwinnski 6y ago

TIL that my IBM PC AT clone in 1987 was not a personal computer.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Better still. Your modern PC retains backwards compatibility and emulates hardware quirks of this "not a PC".

OliverJones 6y ago

Yeah. I started out in 1969 as an intern doing electrocardiogram analysis on a CDC 8090. It had four banks of sixteen KiB of twelve-bit core memory (yeah, little magnetic washers threaded onto a square screen of wires). Obvs 8090 assembler is now useless as a skill. But the thinking and troubleshooting skills needed to make that stuff work? Still use them every day.

necheffa 6y ago

Lolwut? Personal computers have definitely been around _longer_ than just 20 years. Maybe not 40, but it is ludicrous to suggest _less_ than 20 years.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

You should take a look at how personal computers were affecting the economy in the 1980s. Maybe the wikipedia article on the Digital Revolution [0], starting on the section "1969–1989: Invention of the Internet, rise of home computers" [1], or the section "Rise in digital technology use of computers, 1980–2020" [2]. > In developed nations, computers achieved semi-ubiquity during the 1980s as they made their way into schools, homes, business, and industry. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution#1969%E2%80%931989:_Invention_of_the_Internet,_rise_of_home_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution#1969%E2%80%... [2] Rise in digital technology use of computers, 1980–2020

microtherion 6y ago

May I ask when the place you grew up in acquired indoor plumbing? Apple was incorporated in 1976. What do you think they did for the first 25 years of their existence?

bregma 6y ago

He he he. I'm much closer to 60 than to 50, and I played with my first "personal computer" (original Apple ][) in the late 1970s. I have over 40 years of experience with personal computers, servers, and embedded. I've been through bubbles, I've seen the pendulum swing from centralization to distributed several times. I've seen industry behemoths rise and fall. I work hard to maintain a grizzled appearance, and I am an industry veteran. I have encountered ageism (and sexism, and racism) in the industry: it's like mould in blue cheese. It all comes down to the biggest problem in the industry, and probably outside the industry: arrogance.