this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Technology
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It seems 1990-2010 was the golden age for picking computers up "on the fly".
Absolutely, people before that era didn't grow up with computers for the most part. If they did, they knew BASIC, DOS, Unix, etc. from older command-line based machines, and that was pretty rare since computers were expensive and only used for niche applications.
In the 1990s, computers took over the home with multimedia, Windows 95, and the Internet. Growing up in the 90's I had access to a computer from the age of 5. It wasn't the dumbed-down mobile experience of today's smartphones. Computers didn't go to obscene lengths to hide settings and the underlying functionality (filesystem, registry, drivers, boot process, etc) from the user like modern smartphones do. Instead, it was often necessary to dig into these deep layers to set things up or customize your experience. We got good at computers by trial and error. Today's smart devices try to make computing so accessible they don't require (or allow, in many cases) the deep low level configuration access of desktop PCs, especially those of old. People who grew up just using smartphones didn't need to learn how to configure the BIOS, how to install drivers, how to set up network shares, etc. Apple and Google will tell you that's a good thing, but I don't agree.
I'm glad we're starting to see full control come back to the smart device space. Linux phones are getting to be a more and more viable option every day and these let you truly tinker and tweak your mobile experience the same as you would a desktop. I also think projects like Raspberry Pi have been great in getting actual computers into the hands of younger audiences where they can tinker and tweak and learn.