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We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

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Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#111

Post by alex_c »

saulpw wrote: post #57
101008 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. What? Definitely not. I went to university and my first two years were subjects where I had to understand really deep levels of abstractions. I had to build logic gates, I had to work with hardware, wires, etc. I didnt see the point back then (I never used any of that profes…

You started with logic gates. How much EE did you do, or the actual physics that makes the transistor possible? Those are the previous (deeper) levels that people had to know before they got abstracted away.

The one thing I appreciated about my Computer Engineering undergrad - and it took me a few years to fully appreciate it - is that yes, we did cover those levels.

The first two years were shared with Electrical Engineering. The second two years started to specialize towards Computer Engineering topics.

* Physics and chemistry.

* Circuits.

* Transistors.

* Logic gates.

* FPGAs.

* Assembly.

* Compilers.

* CPU and hardware design.

* Operating systems.

* Networking layers.

* Programming languages.

* Computer graphics.

Did I master all of the above - absolutely not. I loved some of them, struggled with others. Generally the cut-off for how my brain works is logic gates, I was never strong at the levels below that.

But we did cover them, and I could honestly say I had at least a rough understanding and mental map of everything that happens inside a computer from the point where it's plugged into an outlet, to the point where pixels show up on the screen.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#112

Post by bluGill »

AIorNot wrote: post #54
CommieBobDole wrote: post #22

The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. We might have some understanding of one or two previous levels, but that decreases the farther down you go. We might understand the next level, and some of the next after that, but eventually people will be making things that we don't have the context to understand without hav…

Wait a second, its layers all the way down Exactly, I'm over 50 and I remember all the complaints about script kiddies who looked at windows bat files as opposed to all the 'real programmers' who knew C and Assembly and used VIM and linux (which is still going strong) (ie https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/378:_Real_Program... ) but now also as an AI engineer we have to learn how harnesses, sys prompts, vario…

Script kiddies didn't look at the .bat files. They ran them without a clue how they worked. There was some respect for the people who wrote those scripts but none for users who couldn't write them

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#114

Post by dranudin »

rapidaneurism wrote: post #94
VorpalWay wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I took software focused computer engineering around 2010, we still had courses that took us all the way down to transistors and even the physics of P and N junctions and how that applies to CMOS. (And even some basic analog electronics.) Did I end up an expert at those layers? Of course not, but I know the basics and I know enough that if I need to I know where to start learning more. Just like I wasn't a C++ or…

Similar experience in the 90s, but we don't really know the intricacies of doping silicone, or smelting metal to make the pins. And what about mining it? I think the last time people knew how things were made was in preindustrial societies because they had to build everything themselves (whatever little things they had)

I was once in a museum in Bolzano, Italy. And they had the ice man mummy there (we call him Ötzi). He died like 5000years ago. And his "axe" was made of copper from some mine very far away. So even this guy probably did not know how everything he had was made. There is a theory that he was probably very rich. So maybe less rich people were more in touch with what they owned. But still I found it fascinating that even so far back people relied on technology and materials that they didn't really know about.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#115

Post by mywittyname »

WJW wrote: post #98
andai wrote: post #65

@ryancbriggs - 18 Oct 2024 > When I was young I fixed my parents’ computer and now that I’m older I fix computers for my kids. Are we the only generation that knows how computers work? https://x.com/ryancbriggs/status/1847391612428517844 https://xcancel.com/ryancbriggs/status/1847391612428517844

No, that person is just the only one in his family who knows how computers work. There's plenty of people in generations both older and younger that know too, just apparently not his parents or his kids. Some of the most impressive assembly written today is by people younger than 20. It'll be fine.

It's broadly true though, that younger people struggle with the fundamentals of computing, even if there exists specific examples of young people accomplishing exceptional feats.

We raised a generation of people on consumption-based computing devices, which means they don't develop the skills necessary to produce things using computers. Of course, we can teach these skills, but to do that, we must first acknowledge it's a skill which needs to be taught.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#116

Post by throawayonthe »

> The machine was made of edges and you cut yourself on them, and that is how you found out where they were

> ...having fought a particular machine, and lost, and gone back, and finally felt the thing give

mayhaps this is because our computing paradigms are stuck in the 70's

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#117

Post by lelanthran »

esikich wrote: post #66
hatefulheart wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Please get used to this sort of depressive, absurd and out of touch tone from HNers, it’s literally all they do now. Don’t bother calling people here hackers anymore, they have checked out emotionally and spiritually.

What's absurd is thinking because you took a logic class and made a flip flop 30 years ago that that is the ground floor and that it means you "understand how it all works". You're not building a CPU from logic gates and you don't know how it works. If I put you or OP in a room for a year I highly doubt you could build an 8 bit Atari-like CPU from scratch. I worked with wires and logic too but I'm not arrogant enough…

> If I put you or OP in a room for a year I highly doubt you could build an 8 bit Atari-like CPU from scratch.

I believe I can, depending on what "from scratch" means. With nothing but transistors, resistors, inductors, coils, capacitors, I can probably do apretty poor general-purpose CPU. Maybe something like a stack-based ISA or, if I had more time, an accumulator-based processor like a 6502, but with an 8-bit bus.

If you're going to ask me to create transistors themselves, well I believe that needs specialised equipment.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#118

Post by Andrex »

VorpalWay wrote: post #106

> They will have a tool that does everything and asks for nothing, and they will be as easy with it as you are with the light switch you never once thought about. Oh come on! Of course I wondered how a light switch work, and I then learnt. I remember taking apart broken electronics as a kid, and that later morphed into also trying to repair things. Including the computer (both hardware and software wise). I remember…

The thing is, yes it will still happen, but at substantially decreased rate. Groups of people banding together to solve a problem or figure a solution will slowly stop forming. Everyone will be out there learning just for themselves.

The collective knowledge of people will likely ebb. Things will be different and individuals will have to adapt.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#119

Post by apsurd »

xpct wrote: post #103
apsurd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

come on now. so even if you're right, checking out emotionally and spiritually just means more life lived. That ain't some kind of bad thing. life is good sometimes. hard sometimes. and it's long sometimes, so give people a break.

> checking out emotionally and spiritually just means more life lived What exactly about checking out makes it 'more living'? I sense a false dichotomy here

easy: we all need breaks. breaks are not bad. living doesn't only mean "doing actions"

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#120

Post by [deleted] »

mghackerlady wrote: post #35
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is already shocking to a certain degree seeing very young people not being able to use a vehicle in the narrow sense because all they ever learned were the mechanical controls of the so-called automobile. We could do this forever.

the difference is that an automatic transmission doesn't make the car work worse. The modern UX landscape would rather board up a room because the door has a sharp handle than figure out how to make the handle less sharp ETA: Or, to put it in car terms, we were all forced to take cabs (except for the people who were interested in driving, who became cab drivers) because car crashes happen or my sand eating neighbour…

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