3 ms·

When I was sixteen I got one of the earlier digital HD cameras (Canon VIXIA HF100) and Sony Vegas Movie Studio for my birthday. It was a neat camera and I like

by tombert 7mo ago

When I was sixteen I got one of the earlier digital HD cameras (Canon VIXIA HF100) and Sony Vegas Movie Studio for my birthday. It was a neat camera and I liked Vegas, and I was grateful that my parents got them for me, but an issue that I had with it was that my computer wasn't nearly powerful enough to edit the video. Even setting the preview to the lowest quality settings, I was lucky to get 2fps with the 1080i video. I still made it work. I got pretty good at reading the waveform preview, and was able to use that to figure out where to do cuts. I would apply effects and walk through frame by frame with the arrow keys to see how it looked. It usually took all night (and sometimes a bit of the next day) to render videos into 1080i, but it would render and the resulting videos would be fine. Eventually I got a job and saved up and bought a decent CPU and GPU and editing got 10x easier, but I still kind of look back on the time of me having to make my shitty computer work with a certain degree of fondness. When you have a decent job with decent money you can buy the equipment you need to do most tasks, but there's sort of a purity in doing a task that you really don't have the equipment you need.

neonstatic 7mo ago
It's a great example of going the extra mile due to external limitations. I bet you developed skills and intuitions you wouldn't have if you started with great hardware from the get go.
m463 7mo ago
At some point the limitations can flip around. when you're young, time is infinite, money is scarce. Older, and time seems to take over. The limitations are - when can you free up the time? Is relaxing allowed?
- tombert 7mo ago
  Oh no argument on that. I have a typical yuppie software job with decent pay, so generally I will buy the right tools for a job now instead of trying to make due with whatever I can scrap together. I'm not that busy of a person, but I certainly have more obligations than I did when I was sixteen, and now sometimes it really is worth it to spend an extra grand on something than it is to spend a week hacking together something from my existing stuff. Still, I look back at the hours I spent making terrible YouTube videos with my terrible computer really fondly. I was proud of myself for making things work, I was proud of the little workarounds I found. I think it's the same reason I love reading about classic computing (80's-90's era). Computers in the 80's were objectively terrible compared to anything we have now, and people still figured out how to squeeze every little bit of juice possible to make really awesome games and programs. The Commodore 64 and Amiga demos are fun to play around with because people will figure out the coolest tricks to make these computers do things that they have no business doing. I mean, the fact that Bad Apple has been "ported" to pretty much everything is something I cannot stop being fascinated by. [1] [2] [3] [4] [1] https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU [2] https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o [3] https://youtu.be/OsDy-4L6-tQ https://youtu.be/OsDy-4L6-tQ [4] https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s
- rebolek 7mo ago
  It probably depends where you live. When I was young, time was infinite and money were scarce. Now they're both the limit.
curiousigor 7mo ago
I had a similar experience but with design software (which I pirated at the time since I just didn't have the money to buy stuff from Adobe). I'd install Photoshop and Illustrator on my shitty computer I put together from spare parts my dad didn't have the use of anymore from his business computers. It was horribly slow, but I kinda made it work slowly. The thing is that I think this is what made me think a bit differently, since everything was slowed down and took more time than I would want it to, I had to make deliberate decisions on what to add/edit. I still work the same way today to pa point, but that's because I'm both faster, more experienced and the computers have gotten more performant (and because I can afford better devices sure). When I look at my half-brother and his teenage generation I wonder if they can still have such an experience. The personal devices have gotten better and faster, most things are really convenient and you sometimes even don't have to think a lot to do something also because they're cheap to do... they probably won't have the experience of "grinding it out" just for the sake of producing something they like...maybe sports is the closest...no idea, but have been thinking about this quite a lot recently...
PaulRobinson 7mo ago
I learned to code on my school's BBC Micro. [0] 8-bit. 16KiB of RAM. BASIC as the programming language. 640x256 resolution in 8 colours. I could make that thing sing in an hour. It was hard to get it to do much, but then the difficulty was the fun thing. By the time we got to the early 2000s and I could buy something with more RAM, CPU and storage than I could ever reasonably max out for the problems I was interested in at the time, I lost something. Working within constraints teaches you something, I think. Doing more with less makes you appreciate the "more" you eventually end up with. You develop intuitions and instincts and whole skillsets that others never had to develop. You get an advantage. I don't think we should be going back to 8-bit days any time soon, but in the context of this post, I want novices to try and build software on an A18 chip, I want learners to be curious enough to build a small word game (Hangman will do at first, but the A18 will let them push way, way past that into the limits of something that starts to feel hard all of a sudden), to develop the intuition of writing code on a system that isn't quite big enough for their ideas. It'll make them thirsty for more, and better at using it when they get it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
- znpy 7mo ago
  I’m waiting for somebody to come and tell us about the time they punched cards by hand, one hole at the time, and then threw coal in the furnace to have the cards interpreted by a steam-powered computer.
  - zeristor 7mo ago
    Is this close enough? it’s from 1969, I wonder what became of them: “Tomorrow's World: Nellie the School Computer 15 February 1969 - BBC” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DtY42xEOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DtY42xEOI
  - sgarland 7mo ago
    Do you have a substantive argument against any points made by parent?
    - 7mo ago
notlenin 7mo ago
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - ll of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” - Brian Eno

by tombert 7mo ago

neonstatic 7mo ago

It's a great example of going the extra mile due to external limitations. I bet you developed skills and intuitions you wouldn't have if you started with great hardware from the get go.

m463 7mo ago

At some point the limitations can flip around. when you're young, time is infinite, money is scarce. Older, and time seems to take over. The limitations are - when can you free up the time? Is relaxing allowed?

tombert 7mo ago
Oh no argument on that. I have a typical yuppie software job with decent pay, so generally I will buy the right tools for a job now instead of trying to make due with whatever I can scrap together. I'm not that busy of a person, but I certainly have more obligations than I did when I was sixteen, and now sometimes it really is worth it to spend an extra grand on something than it is to spend a week hacking together something from my existing stuff. Still, I look back at the hours I spent making terrible YouTube videos with my terrible computer really fondly. I was proud of myself for making things work, I was proud of the little workarounds I found. I think it's the same reason I love reading about classic computing (80's-90's era). Computers in the 80's were objectively terrible compared to anything we have now, and people still figured out how to squeeze every little bit of juice possible to make really awesome games and programs. The Commodore 64 and Amiga demos are fun to play around with because people will figure out the coolest tricks to make these computers do things that they have no business doing. I mean, the fact that Bad Apple has been "ported" to pretty much everything is something I cannot stop being fascinated by. [1] [2] [3] [4] [1] https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU https://youtu.be/2vPe452cegU [2] https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o https://youtu.be/qRdGhHEoj3o [3] https://youtu.be/OsDy-4L6-tQ https://youtu.be/OsDy-4L6-tQ [4] https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s
rebolek 7mo ago
It probably depends where you live. When I was young, time was infinite and money were scarce. Now they're both the limit.

curiousigor 7mo ago

I had a similar experience but with design software (which I pirated at the time since I just didn't have the money to buy stuff from Adobe). I'd install Photoshop and Illustrator on my shitty computer I put together from spare parts my dad didn't have the use of anymore from his business computers. It was horribly slow, but I kinda made it work slowly. The thing is that I think this is what made me think a bit differently, since everything was slowed down and took more time than I would want it to, I had to make deliberate decisions on what to add/edit. I still work the same way today to pa point, but that's because I'm both faster, more experienced and the computers have gotten more performant (and because I can afford better devices sure). When I look at my half-brother and his teenage generation I wonder if they can still have such an experience. The personal devices have gotten better and faster, most things are really convenient and you sometimes even don't have to think a lot to do something also because they're cheap to do... they probably won't have the experience of "grinding it out" just for the sake of producing something they like...maybe sports is the closest...no idea, but have been thinking about this quite a lot recently...

PaulRobinson 7mo ago

I learned to code on my school's BBC Micro. [0] 8-bit. 16KiB of RAM. BASIC as the programming language. 640x256 resolution in 8 colours. I could make that thing sing in an hour. It was hard to get it to do much, but then the difficulty was the fun thing. By the time we got to the early 2000s and I could buy something with more RAM, CPU and storage than I could ever reasonably max out for the problems I was interested in at the time, I lost something. Working within constraints teaches you something, I think. Doing more with less makes you appreciate the "more" you eventually end up with. You develop intuitions and instincts and whole skillsets that others never had to develop. You get an advantage. I don't think we should be going back to 8-bit days any time soon, but in the context of this post, I want novices to try and build software on an A18 chip, I want learners to be curious enough to build a small word game (Hangman will do at first, but the A18 will let them push way, way past that into the limits of something that starts to feel hard all of a sudden), to develop the intuition of writing code on a system that isn't quite big enough for their ideas. It'll make them thirsty for more, and better at using it when they get it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro

znpy 7mo ago
I’m waiting for somebody to come and tell us about the time they punched cards by hand, one hole at the time, and then threw coal in the furnace to have the cards interpreted by a steam-powered computer.
- zeristor 7mo ago
  Is this close enough? it’s from 1969, I wonder what became of them: “Tomorrow's World: Nellie the School Computer 15 February 1969 - BBC” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DtY42xEOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DtY42xEOI
- sgarland 7mo ago
  Do you have a substantive argument against any points made by parent?
  - 7mo ago

notlenin 7mo ago

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - ll of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” - Brian Eno