Posted on 09/26/2020 7:53:05 AM PDT by sodpoodle
As an analogy: Just because you watch TV, that does not make you a TV repairman.
:)
I am now officially a Senior Citizen. My first exposure was to an IBM mainframe while I was in high school and we used Fortran. We had mainframes in college. In grad school our department got a PDP system and we worked together to program some plotters to make figures for papers and our dissertations. Our family has always had computers and used them for more than games. I can program in C, C++, Fortran, R, and Python. I use the the language that best suits the problem at hand. These days I use mostly R and Python. In most instances the problem is between the keyboard and the chair .
I learned on DOS computers. Forgot it all now.
My husband has some sort of mental block about computers. He just cannot get the thing straight, even though we’ve had computers for years, and he has taken classes. He’s a tad resentful that I have not put him on our Amazon account, but as I’ve tried to tell him, if you start using our bank card on your kindle or laptop, you could get our account messed up, because you hit on clickbait by mistake a lot, and some of it is bad news.
I once donated lots of computers to the Senior center so the folks could do basic things like email, write letters, surf the net...... Man, what a job that turned out to be. .... But it was worth it to see the joy they had emailing family and friends. It gave them a new sense of life.
I agree with all that. Pretty much went through similar experiences. I am sure the young generation will go through their own experiences and tell their grandchildren about the good old days too when they grow old.
50 years from now computers will be totally different.
“Try someone under 30 on a rotary phone...ROFL”
Today we can just “speak” to our phones, Siri, computers, Alexa, etc.
BUT... the first telephone I used had no dial. All you had to do was pick up the receiver and “speak”.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 New International Version
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Microsoft let us old-timers keep our old webtv email address.
I get hilarious phishing emails telling me my webtv is not working anymore and to call them for tech support. :-)
I am 67 and I started working on computers (Honeywells, or Honeybuckets as we referred to them) when I joined the Air Force in the early 70’s and started building my own in the late 80s and for many years I switched every year from buying one off the shelf one year then building one from scratch the next year and I did this until about 15 years ago when I stopped using desktops so much in favor of laptops and tablets. I usually keep about half a dozen current versions of each and I still keep a state-of-the-art desktop just in case I need need a powerhouse. The only regret I have is all that time I spent early on when PC operating software was terrible and having nightmares with things like IRQs, limited power supply size, and so on. Todays computers are chimp friendly and even a moron can usually use one. So todays youth is not nearly as intelligent as they think they are. They have always had flawless plug-and-play not plug-and-pray as we old timers had. How many young ones know anything about machine code and could input one? Could they even explain a cksum. I doubt it, everything is under a well polished GUI and that is far as their knowledge goes. I was in the computer section at Best Buy a few years ago and I asked the clerk where to find a dongle. She looked at me with a blank expression and it was obvious she was clueless.
Good laugh right here
https://youtu.be/J-p9JkH4RY8
Burroughs, I learned on Burroughs...
ask young people to peel potatoes or change the oil in a car...or how to make cookies from scratch or how to play pinochle or rook, etc.
Euchre = poor man’s pinochle.. Great Michigan/Midwest game...
AKA PICNIC: Problem In Chair Not In Computer
One of my work study jobs when I returned to school after working in a lumber mill for 8 years three decades ago was computer lab assistent. I had been a computer enthusiast for many years, so I quickly was given many more responsiblilities. But my job was basically to help other students with their home work, maintain the computers, and terminals, and fill in when a professor was late or absent.
Helping students even when you are looking over their shoulders and telling them exactly what to do was more challenging than what you might expect. But it was nothing compared to trying to help my parents who are well into their 80s with computer issues.
The thing that amazes me these days are how even young people typically have no clue about using directories or “folders” (as they are now called) and how to organize or even navigate through them. Since people are so dense about this most programs these days try to do it all for you automatically, many will not even let you organize your files in ways that are more efficient for you.
My sis, a retired ATCer, has told me some funny conversations she had with mostly student pilots. Her husband, a CFII, has told me, “Some of the worst students at radio communications were the best at flying the plane.”
I spent so much time flying under, around, and away from controlled airspace, that communcation almost became a phobia. I mean, the thrill of flying just wasn’t that great if I wasn’t close to the trees (and rooftops).
I guess it is the country boy in me. The less contact with guvmint the better. Kinda like how I avoid DOT chicken coops (scales).
To be a good communicator, one has to first be a good listener. I’m prolly a c student at listening.
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