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As part of the generation who grew up along with computers (that is to say that computers were also growing up) I am concerned that this level of understanding

As part of the generation who grew up along with computers (that is to say that computers were also growing up) I am concerned that this level of understanding is no longer common. What happens when not enough people remember how the foundations of our towers of abstraction work? I've been shopping for a C=64 for my kid.

rbanffy 2y ago
I would recommend the TheC64 Maxi. It’s a replica, but very faithful, and can be setup to start as a C64 would (disk and tape are emulated from USB sticks, but that’s a minor compromise).
vunderba 2y ago
The same thing that happens with every level of technology that eventually becomes ubiquitous enough to be considered a household appliance. How many people understand the internal workings of a combustion engine, how a telephone works, or how a microwave heats up their food? Here's what happens, society chugs along just fine until a catastrophic event like an EMP which effectively drops them back into the Stone Age, except even worse because many people have jobs with skill sets that don't really serve a purpose outside of the modern capitalistic economy.
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- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Not many understand but they should try. It is very fulfilling to build an engine (start with an electric motor; it’s trivial but still fulfilling). It is very fulfilling to build a computer out of basic logic gates. Or a radio out of some crap that’s definitely laying around in your house. You are missing out not doing that; things seem like magic until you do them. Sure building a processor yourself won’t have all the branch prediction and etc as your intel/m* has, but at least you understand how it could work. Same for gpus ; you won’t be making anything close to what the state of the art is, but you’ll understand how it gets there.
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anonzzzies 2y ago
I have a few 100 (I had over a 1000) original c64s I give away to kids; one of them managed to solder in more memory and make a networking card from a pi zero. It’s fun; everything is easy fixable and it Just Works. After 40 years.
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hylaride 2y ago
One could argue it was never all that common, except for a period where the “lower level” was all that was available. Though I have seen (possibly anecdotal) interest in some microcontroller hobbying with younger geeks, including ESP32 stuff. But this way of thinking can also be applied to other industries. What ends up happening is that specialization forms. There are still (young even) people that get into low level languages, including assembler when optimizations require it (though compilers just keep getting better). There’s also the inevitable back and forth between abstraction, then a reversal to simplify and remove layers. You had low level (binary/assembler) higher (C), higher (java JRE, python/perl/JS and other interpreted languages) and now there’s interest in Rust, which is a bit of a modern twist on lower level programming. You see this back and forth elsewhere. Computing work used to be done on the server side (mainframes), then distributed out to individual computers, and then back to the cloud, and next (LLMs maybe)?

rbanffy 2y ago

I would recommend the TheC64 Maxi. It’s a replica, but very faithful, and can be setup to start as a C64 would (disk and tape are emulated from USB sticks, but that’s a minor compromise).

vunderba 2y ago

The same thing that happens with every level of technology that eventually becomes ubiquitous enough to be considered a household appliance. How many people understand the internal workings of a combustion engine, how a telephone works, or how a microwave heats up their food? Here's what happens, society chugs along just fine until a catastrophic event like an EMP which effectively drops them back into the Stone Age, except even worse because many people have jobs with skill sets that don't really serve a purpose outside of the modern capitalistic economy.

deleted 2y ago
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anonzzzies 2y ago
Not many understand but they should try. It is very fulfilling to build an engine (start with an electric motor; it’s trivial but still fulfilling). It is very fulfilling to build a computer out of basic logic gates. Or a radio out of some crap that’s definitely laying around in your house. You are missing out not doing that; things seem like magic until you do them. Sure building a processor yourself won’t have all the branch prediction and etc as your intel/m* has, but at least you understand how it could work. Same for gpus ; you won’t be making anything close to what the state of the art is, but you’ll understand how it gets there.
deleted 2y ago
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anonzzzies 2y ago

I have a few 100 (I had over a 1000) original c64s I give away to kids; one of them managed to solder in more memory and make a networking card from a pi zero. It’s fun; everything is easy fixable and it Just Works. After 40 years.

deleted 2y ago

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hylaride 2y ago

One could argue it was never all that common, except for a period where the “lower level” was all that was available. Though I have seen (possibly anecdotal) interest in some microcontroller hobbying with younger geeks, including ESP32 stuff. But this way of thinking can also be applied to other industries. What ends up happening is that specialization forms. There are still (young even) people that get into low level languages, including assembler when optimizations require it (though compilers just keep getting better). There’s also the inevitable back and forth between abstraction, then a reversal to simplify and remove layers. You had low level (binary/assembler) higher (C), higher (java JRE, python/perl/JS and other interpreted languages) and now there’s interest in Rust, which is a bit of a modern twist on lower level programming. You see this back and forth elsewhere. Computing work used to be done on the server side (mainframes), then distributed out to individual computers, and then back to the cloud, and next (LLMs maybe)?