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Childhood Computing

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Re: Childhood Computing

#121

Post by qsera »

joarv0249nw wrote: post #106
bluefirebrand wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair. There's probably also an aspect of "The computer used to be a place you would go, now it's a rectangle that comes everywhere with you" It's definitely less magical when it is everywhere and in everythin You're not alone in missing the magic though. I miss it too

I think part of the magic was that I felt I could get to understand how the system works on a deeper level. I wonder if it is now too hard to get to that level of understanding. One would spend most of the time just scratching the almost impenetrable surface of todays systems

Abstract things stimulate the imagination and guide them. That is why reading a book is a lot more enjoyable than watching a movie.

When computers started showing reality, that is true color, high res photos, realistic movies etc, they became less capable of capturing the imagination.

Re: Childhood Computing

#122

Post by nullIsAnObject »

echelon wrote: post #21

I remember the titles on the old Apple II machines at elementary school: - Oregon Trail - Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego - Super Solvers (the best of the lot) I also got a Windows 95 IBM Aptiva PC from my parents that had a lot of educational software. I can only remember some of it: - The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain (I loved this game - it had logic programming, 3D spatial reasoning tasks, biology, ...) - Encarta…

2 words: Family Computing. When that magazine showed up and there was something I could use on my Apple IIe, I would sit there (or kneel, actually, we had one of those 80s kneeling chair things) endlessly, even skipping meals or forgetting to go take a leak every once in a while. I discovered flow state in 5th grade and didn't even realize it.

I used to skip recess in elementary school to go write code in the computer lab; the teachers all knew me and would laugh out loud when I made the computer make a noise... until one day when I programmed the monophonic speaker to sound like it was polyphonic and out came the title theme from Terms of Endearment in all of it's 80s glory. I miss those days.

Man, mavis beacon teaches typing! I wonder if that ever actually did me any good.

Re: Childhood Computing

#123

Post by dekdrop »

Many of us were introduced to computers as a means to use office suite - MS office - in school. Computer usage was mostly surrounded by this and other application programs. Teaching on programming the computer was not there at all. In higher class, programming was introduced, but only the syntax.

Re: Childhood Computing

#124

Post by pelasaco »

daft_pink wrote: post #71

I too started using computers at a young age and loved them and even got my own Nintendo when I was young. I feel very conflicted about the current anti screen fad. My son is very young and my wife doesn’t want him to use screens at all. I don’t want him to use tik tok or facebook but maybe I will buy an apple 2 or setup a rpi emulator and play little old school games that weren’t available online.

i went the same road, and have great results. No mobile. Every night, read books with the kids. Video Game in the weekend, only 2D games, like Mario 3. Worked great for us. Now they are teenagers, doing well in sports and school, have always a book with them, and no social media.

Re: Childhood Computing

#125

Post by sebastiennight »

WillAdams wrote: post #110
sebastiennight wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey you made my day, I can now say that I contributed to a CAD project. Had never heard of a "knapp joint" before! OK so your bottom circles are identical, so the y-position of the center of the top circle is easy as pie. What does your code need to do?

My pleasure! The Knapp joint is an interesting historical dead-end in woodworking joinery --- it's interesting to see it come back. I will work up a module like to: def Full_Blind_Box_Joint(self, bx, by, orientation, side, width, thickness, largeVdiameter, smallDiameter, normalormirror = "Default", squaretool = 102, smallV = 390, largeV = 301): from: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/gcodepre... (ju…

That's really cool, thanks!

Tangential question out of curiosity: I see several designs mention cost, eg. a "$3 box" and I assume this is just counting the cost of materials? How much does the "manufacturing" cost factor in, eg. amortizing the saws and equipment over all the stuff that you might make out of them?

Ever since I learned the math on swimming pools (which comes out at something like $400 per swim you'll have in them IIRC) I've been curious as to how wild the numbers come out to be on most of our personal projects and how economics can't be the measure for them. I'm curious if you have some thoughts on that.

Re: Childhood Computing

#126

Post by unmole »

> The computers were very old IBM PC compatible machines, mostly with monochrome cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors. They had no hard disks at all. They had a few hundred kilobytes of RAM. Every time, we performed the same ritual. Insert a 5¼-inch floppy disk to load MS-DOS into memory. Then insert another disk to load LOGO.COM. Then write small Logo programs and watch the turtle move.

I'm a few years younger than OP and grew up in a large Indian city, but this matches my earliest experience exactly, right down to having to take our shoes off before entering the computer lab.

Re: Childhood Computing

#127

Post by alterom »

safety1st wrote: post #97
alterom wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I essentially owe my career to two great strokes of luck. >The first was that my father purchased a PC in the early 1990s >The second was attending a high school with a reasonably well funded computer lab So, you essentially own your career to your parents being well-off and tech inclined . It's not like you ended up in that high school by accident . Sure, being born in such a family is a stroke of luck that many pe…

My parents were broke. I grew up on food stamps. Mom worked retail. Dad had a few good years, his business went bust and we spent a decade below the poverty line. It was a public high school in the USA. It was in a rich neighborhood on the other side of town; our neighborhood was below median income and had one of the worst high schools in the state. My parents encouraged me to apply for attendance at the school acro…

>My parents were broke. I grew up on food stamps

I grew up in a communal flat in post-collapse Ukraine with 5 families to 1 toilet, and then on food stamps when we immigrated to the US. I went to a public high school, and state colleges.

Your point about public investment in resources which were available to anyone who was willing to make a bit of extra effort notwithstanding, many kids from the very same school(s) didn't do so well, and it was far less about "willing to make a bit of extra effort".

>Public policy has changed, that magnet program is now gone, that rich kid school is now for the rich kids only, and it has gone to the dogs in terms of academic performance.

That, sadly, applies to my high school in Brooklyn too (E.R. Murrow High School). It's not at all what it used to be.

> It seems these days that public resources go mostly to those with the most money, or maybe those who were born into the politically correct group du jour, but almost never to the random kid who just wants to take a shot at doing something bigger.

BIGOTRY ALARM BELL

Yeah right. The kids get the resources today because they belonged to a "politically correct group du jour", unlike you, who was merely "willing to make a bit of extra effort".

And also, you know, had a personal computer at home in the 1990s, and lived in a neighborhood with a high school mostly for rich kids.

Uh huh.

>I'm not relating this in order to validate precisely what my Privilege Index was

That much is clear, which is why I'm pointing your attention to it.

Describing yourself as "the random kid who just wants to take a shot at doing something bigger", as opposed to "those who were born into the politically correct group du jour" was absolutely uncalled for.

Re: Childhood Computing

#128

Post by WillAdams »

sebastiennight wrote: post #125
WillAdams wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pleasure! The Knapp joint is an interesting historical dead-end in woodworking joinery --- it's interesting to see it come back. I will work up a module like to: def Full_Blind_Box_Joint(self, bx, by, orientation, side, width, thickness, largeVdiameter, smallDiameter, normalormirror = "Default", squaretool = 102, smallV = 390, largeV = 301): from: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/gcodepre... (ju…

That's really cool, thanks! Tangential question out of curiosity: I see several designs mention cost, eg. a "$3 box" and I assume this is just counting the cost of materials? How much does the "manufacturing" cost factor in, eg. amortizing the saws and equipment over all the stuff that you might make out of them? Ever since I learned the math on swimming pools (which comes out at something like $400 per swim you'll h…

The $3 Box, back when it was first made was made of 3 $1 cutting boards from the local Dollar Tree (I believe they're up to $1.25 now).

Additional expenses are of course the machine, tooling, workholding, electric to run the machine, and one's time, but for a hobbyist, amortized over a number of projects, that can be pretty minimal --- if one makes a _lot_ of projects. YMMV.

Re: Childhood Computing

#129

Post by alterom »

alterom wrote: post #127
safety1st wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents were broke. I grew up on food stamps. Mom worked retail. Dad had a few good years, his business went bust and we spent a decade below the poverty line. It was a public high school in the USA. It was in a rich neighborhood on the other side of town; our neighborhood was below median income and had one of the worst high schools in the state. My parents encouraged me to apply for attendance at the school acro…

>My parents were broke. I grew up on food stamps I grew up in a communal flat in post-collapse Ukraine with 5 families to 1 toilet, and then on food stamps when we immigrated to the US. I went to a public high school, and state colleges. Your point about public investment in resources which were available to anyone who was willing to make a bit of extra effort notwithstanding, many kids from the very same school(s) d…

Small correction.

Instead of "lived in a neighborhood with a high school mostly for rich kids", the line should say "had parents that not only let you tinker with their very expensive machine, but also encouraged you to apply to well-funded magnet schools".

My point - that you owe your success to growing up in that household to a larger extent than other "quirks of chance" - still stands.

Re: Childhood Computing

#130

Post by jz391 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #35
qsera wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure. Computers where pretty homogenous back then as well. Every time I find myself infront of a computer, I would do "cd games", and there would be games... I think it started becoming less interesting as it grew more powerful and with it came more capable displays and GUI interface, and before you know it, computers are indistinguishable from a damn television. At least for me as computers started showing more…

That's fair. There's probably also an aspect of "The computer used to be a place you would go, now it's a rectangle that comes everywhere with you" It's definitely less magical when it is everywhere and in everythin You're not alone in missing the magic though. I miss it too

I think many of us miss that feeling... For me, the level of complexity of the computers in my childhood (TRS-80, Spectrum) made them interesting but still possible to fully understand. I think we have lost that - modern hardware and software has complexity on a scale which makes it impossible to fully follow. After decades of computing, I only have a high-level understanding of many components of a typical PC. So for my son, any understanding of what's going will be difficult...
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