Weird, right? I feel like I grew up in the perfect generation, where I started with MS-DOS and Windows ‘95. We had to KNOW how things worked in order to get games and other software running. Had to know how to install, how to fix driver issues, how to configure things, etc. Even (re)install a complete OS.
But tech these days ‘just works’. A lot of software is one click installs, with no real user interaction needed. And everything else is easily accessed on the web or a phone app. Windows itself is also much more reliable, so even that doesn’t require much knowledge.
It’s made everything available to a much wider audience, but it also means people don’t need to develop actual skills in this area. A good example is my dad. He never figured out how to do things on our Windows ‘95 PC, but he loves his iPad because it’s so easy toddlers can use it.
You had to prove you were worthy to play the game by resolving IRQ conflicts and figuring out how to squeeze every spare byte out of HIMEM.SYS. Sometime it was more challenging than the actual game.
And let’s not forget that ‘system requirements’ were more like ‘system suggestions and challenges’. Especially when your parents bought ‘a computer’ with hardware specs that basically read ‘hard drive, memory, soundcard, CD-ROM drive’.
So when configuring things, there was some trial and error involved in figuring out what the software could attempt to configure in order to work with your specific thing. It’s not like today where us gamers pick the exact hardware down to the RGB-infused RAM.
And few things were plug and play prior to USB. You know how shitty printers are now? Try wrestling with one of those on a fucking parallel port.
Camping out at the library with whatever computer magazines they had in the reference section taking notes or using your last dime to make a copy because god forbid your parents would waste money on a subscription to BYTE or something.
As someone who isn’t technologically ignorant: I’d rather have things that “just work” over things that I spend 3 days trying to make work and it still doesn’t.
Weird, right? I feel like I grew up in the perfect generation, where I started with MS-DOS and Windows ‘95. We had to KNOW how things worked in order to get games and other software running. Had to know how to install, how to fix driver issues, how to configure things, etc. Even (re)install a complete OS.
But tech these days ‘just works’. A lot of software is one click installs, with no real user interaction needed. And everything else is easily accessed on the web or a phone app. Windows itself is also much more reliable, so even that doesn’t require much knowledge.
It’s made everything available to a much wider audience, but it also means people don’t need to develop actual skills in this area. A good example is my dad. He never figured out how to do things on our Windows ‘95 PC, but he loves his iPad because it’s so easy toddlers can use it.
You had to prove you were worthy to play the game by resolving IRQ conflicts and figuring out how to squeeze every spare byte out of HIMEM.SYS. Sometime it was more challenging than the actual game.
And let’s not forget that ‘system requirements’ were more like ‘system suggestions and challenges’. Especially when your parents bought ‘a computer’ with hardware specs that basically read ‘hard drive, memory, soundcard, CD-ROM drive’.
So when configuring things, there was some trial and error involved in figuring out what the software could attempt to configure in order to work with your specific thing. It’s not like today where us gamers pick the exact hardware down to the RGB-infused RAM.
And few things were plug and play prior to USB. You know how shitty printers are now? Try wrestling with one of those on a fucking parallel port.
Nothing quite like having to learn to edit config.sys in order to make something work with no internet or references at all.
Camping out at the library with whatever computer magazines they had in the reference section taking notes or using your last dime to make a copy because god forbid your parents would waste money on a subscription to BYTE or something.
Nothing quite like having to learn to edit config.sys in order to make something work with no internet or references at all.
That’s why everyone should use Linux.
To not get anything done except setting up the OS till 3am
As someone who isn’t technologically ignorant: I’d rather have things that “just work” over things that I spend 3 days trying to make work and it still doesn’t.