this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yup, agree with this.

And this is why I'm teaching my kids computer stuff. We haven't gotten too crazy with it, but my kids have built some stuff in Scratch and helped me assemble my PC (they'll assemble their own) with me explaining what the main bits do. I also intend to do some basic Arduino-type stuff w/ them as well once I get started w/ home automation (have a NAS and some apps, but no sensors or anything cool like that).

They'll probably never need that knowledge, but having the ability to reason about a problem using some foundational knowledge should be useful regardless of what they do (i.e. why isn't this working? I'll check the wires, run a simpler test, etc).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

But do they have to set jumpers on the motherboard to choose the processor voltage?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And make sure the IRQs on their sound card and printer don't conflict ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"your sound card works perfectly"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It really whips the llama's ass

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I think they open sourced that recently... I should take a look.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Kids these days don't know how good they have it...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They probably never will.

I don't think that's a bad thing. We made it easier, and they're reaping the benefits of our work.

The only issue I see is that when it breaks, nobody will know how to fix it, since we've abstracted all the complexity away from the users, so they don't understand the underlying processes that need to work for the thing to function.

Other than that, it just works.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago

The only issue I see is that when it breaks

That's a pretty big issue, and that's likely a huge contributor to issues like ewaste. If someone owns a computer and the memory goes bad, they buy a new computer instead of new RAM. Likewise with batteries on phones, capacitors on appliance circuit boards, etc. There's so much that used to be regularly repairable that could still be repairable if people understood the basics of the tech they use. But when it stops working, the knee-jerk reaction is to replace it, not repair it, esp. when it's generally cheaper to replace than have a service tech come out (when 50 years ago, many would just repair it themselves using the provided service manual).

I like to blame manufacturers here, but a large part of me has to acknowledge that a lot of people wouldn't bother even if they had all the documentation readily available. A little bit of knowledge about how things actually work can go a long way in reducing waste throughout society.