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.
My grand son asked how much computers have improved since I started. I told him about Moore’s law and that the computers I started on had 5,000 transistors. The ones we have to day can 5,000,000,000. It is a number that I cannot imagine. Actually the computers had less then that. I do remember core memory. Just wish I had held onto one of those.
My grand son asked how much computers have improved since I started. I told him about Moore’s law and that the computers I started on had 5,000 transistors. The ones we have to day can 5,000,000,000. It is a number that I cannot imagine. Actually the computers had less then that. I do remember core memory. Just wish I had held onto one of those.