You two are a bunch of OLD PEOPLE.
To be quite honest, the point in time where I started using computers and I started knowing how to make computer stuff work for me (sometimes) is separated by at least a decade. I started playing computer games as a little kid on cartoonnetwork.com or whatever. Of course, once I started learning (roughly around age 14/15) I didn't stop, and now I've got knowledge on everything from setting up and handling databases in SQL (short version: it's ok) to setting up Cisco routers and troubleshooting internet issues (short version: it
really sucks, never do it for free).
But I absolutely wouldn't have been able to start it on my own, and it's always interesting to me to read about people growing up in times and/or places where this wasn't acceptable. Hell, my high school had mandatory year-long computer science courses, where it was expected you'd be able to make functional websites using Python and CSS for your final project (I spent most of that final project making Tic-Tac-Toe if I recall, with different difficulty levels). Now, granted, my high school was a math & science high school which lived and breathed this sort of stuff, and that's still a pretty radical departure from the average experiences I hear about (my current professor in college was pleasantly surprised to hear about it, at least), but it also shows you how much this has moved forward with time. I mean, my high school is definitely a specialized high school (I think it's in the name, actually) for students performing very high above average, but it was also, you know, a public school with close to 4000 students (how can one be both specialized and huge? Be located in NYC of course), all of whom are expected to learn this.
Y'know, despite playing a whole bunch of video games when I was a kid, there was also a lot of playing outside with my brothers. When we moved to Memphis briefly, I remember following the storm drain for quite a ways, where it actually ended up turning into something like a beach. Was fun, doing that sort of exploration.
For sure, I played outside a ton, too. Just mostly by myself. And yes, stuff that you couldn't get away with today, at least not near the city. I wandered off into the woods by myself as early as 5. My parents gave me near unlimited freedom, compared to what I feel like I can get away with giving my kids today.
My mother gave me pretty damn near unlimited freedom, I just never used it. Her only rules to my sister and I when we were younger were not to hurt ourselves, not to hurt each other, and to tell her where we were so she could find us if necessary. And of course, we never used our freedom except to challenge those rules whenever possible (my sister and I once played around throwing kitchen knives for sport. Inside. I don't believe our mother ever found out, because if she had she would killed me for it).
It's just that I hated (and still hate!) going outside. I can enjoy myself once I'm
already outside, but actually deciding to go was something I rarely did.
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Topic: Talkin' Bout Computing Generations -- Our Nerdy Origin Stories (Read 3225 times)