What if you were started on an Apple computer before Macs existed?
Get out.
I got into programming on a TRS-80 clone. Everything you needed to know to program it was contained in a little 150 page book that came with it.
To program the Mac, you needed a whole bookshelf of books.
Good grief! The word is excluded. Holy shit.
probably a Windows user
I installed Linux for the first time at 14.
13/14 for me. Thinkpad 600 😎
Its nice to know im not the only Linux kid. It felt so weird, most of my friends didn’t even know what Android was. It sucks growing up tech savvy when most people call themselves nerds after discovering “air drop”.
The majority of people I know who have major computer problems solve them by buying another computer
I’m not even that tech illiterate, but I almost did that… My laptop was being slow, and I still had like 4k€ in overtime hours that I could buy Hardware from at work (it’s a great deal because I neither have to pay VAT on the hardware nor income taxes on the money from the overtime), so I was like, eh, might as well get a new laptop.
So then I read up on what laptop brands are out there, found out about Framework, and when I excitedly told my electrical engineer husband about it he was like “You knooow that you can easily replace parts in any laptop, right?”
Well, I didn’t know that (just kinda assumed laptops were more like phones than they are like desktop PCs), so I ended up just ordering a new SSD and new RAM for my laptop. It’s back to being butter smooth, but I have a hunch that cleaning the dust from the fans while I was in there was a very large factor in that haha
I mean, asterisk. Most laptops let you swap the storage and RAM and many let you swap the battery. Beyond that it usually gets difficult.
Framework let you swap everything, which is a major difference. But of course you pay for that privilege; modular design has its costs.
Still, good on you for getting a cheap upgrade. No need to throw away a perfectly good laptop if you can make it work fast again with a new SSD.
Wow that’s an amazing amount of dust. I think that’s the most I have seen in a computer and my only source of laptop used to be old things from recycling centers
Could be explained by the fact that my favorite position to program is on my bed, like a teenage girl from a mediocre 2000’s movie writing in her diary. The laptop fans get a taste of all that good good bed sheet fiber.
My back hurts thinking about this.
Ah I see you keep your laptop well fed. I try to keep mine anorexic lol
I think the issue is not having a desktop-type computer at all and having a tablet/phone that’s so locked down the kid isn’t given the opportunity to explore or troubleshoot.
Tinkering is how you learn to solve problems, which requires having something tinker-able without having to go down a hacky rabbithole.
I think the issue is not having a desktop-type computer at all and having a tablet/phone that’s so locked down the kid isn’t given the opportunity to explore or troubleshoot
True. That being said, I’m pretty sure that a Mac is roughly at the middle point between that and a Windows PC, with Linux users being way more tech savvy still.
In fact, so much exploration and troubleshooting being REQUIRED to make most if not all Linux distros do what you want is (along with game compatibility/availability) the main reason for many people who are sick of Windows to be hesitant to make the switch, myself included.
Witnessed a radiology resident typing her password into a computer and for each uppercase letter she would press shift-lock, type the letter, then press shift-lock again.
I couldn’t figure it out until my mom pointed out she probably only ever used a phone or tablet.
Which is crazy, because I can’t imagine getting through high school, college, and medical school without ever working on a desktop computer.
Exactly.
A background of tinkering with stuff without fear of the consequences of breaking it (which is a common mindset mainly amongst kids and teens) is the difference between a tool-maker and a tool-user, IMHO, and thinkering is far more natural to start doing and to do much further with an open system than with a closed system.
*Reads comments in thread*
I started with a pair of matchsticks and a trenchcoat that I got at Galipoli in WW1, using the Phosphorus I found in the Bosphorus to craft makeshift TI calculator based on specs I got via Fax from a Samurai. I ran slackware on my slacks until we defeated the Ottomans, but they unleashed their puppy linuxes on us, and we stood no chance.
Meanwhile…
At the Hall of Justice, we join our heroes enjoying a celebratory game of Tuxkart on their PopOS devices after their latest defeat of Lex Luthor’s DOS army.
“That was a great buffer underflow, Batman” said Superman, piping his Krypto into a GPG wallet.
“Thank you, Superman. Evil shall think twice before compiling on a non GCC system without warnings enabled!”
It’s all that musl he has.
“Discluded”?
Thank you! This meme is reposted often, and that non-word always jumps out at me.
I think that being forced to learn about WINE at a young age may have been beneficial actually (if extremely unpleasant)
I remember when Wine was in alpha for twelve years (and then beta for three more). Was surprised to learn that it finally exited that stage, some time ago already.
So unpleasant.
There are dozens of us
Hot take: macOS, being Unix like, fosters more tech literacy than Windows.
It’s much better now with windows terminal and winget, but a decade or so ago even basic things like installing python and adding it to PATH were infinitely easier on Unix-like environments.
For those privileged to have programming classes, the first 2-3 sessions were the teachers going round doing tech support just to install python on shitty locked down Windows laptops.
Windows being terrible makes you learn a lot of stuff, but so much of it is untransferrable.
I started with DOS. then windows. I didn’t use Linux until I was in my 20s, and not heavily use it until my 30s.
I just started using a Mac for work because it’s “Unix like”.
Mac’s are fucked up man. I don’t know how anyone gets shit done on them. the UX is developed like it’s for stroke victims with permanent brain damage.
I would rather use W11 than a Mac and I fucking loathe Microsoft and their horrible AI bullshit.
I am still using windows 10.
This. So freaking much this.
Mac is unix in the same way that Android is unix or my car’s infotainment system is Unix.
Yes, there’s unix under the hood, but there’s such a bunch of garbage on top that the unixity really doesn’t help much at all.
My trajectory was win 3.11, then macos 7 & 8, then windows 98… Windows 7 > macOS again as a dev > Linux when I finally got to pick my own software and IT wasn’t what paid the bills.
Windows was always broken so you had to learn to fix shit
Mac never did quite what you needed so you had to work around stuff and try harder
… Next/Mac got me very literate with Unix
… Linux is just kinda what I know.
But Unix based macos really is an excellent os. It’s just a shame its so locked to their hardware.
A mac is the only non linux machine I’ll willingly use if I didn’t have the choice of linux
I think this is pretty reasonable and shouldn’t be a hot take. IMO, what macOS does better is to provide a simple UI that protects less experienced users well enough from themselves while keeping developer tools accessible and close enough to standard Unix stuff. It’s easy to get into but not too hard to move past the basics once you need to. In Windows, I often feel like the opposite is true. The UI is a complicated mess of three different UIs that doesn’t even protect users all that well, and developer tools are often separate products with their own learning curve that are aggressively Windows-specific.
There was a fairy large era of macs that were way more open to customization then windows. Probably still true because Microsoft has gotten a lot more aggressive about locking down their os and the average gamer has no clue how to install mods if it isn’t from the Steam workshop.
In a previous relationship I gave my partner a small tour of the terminal application preinstalled in her Macbook. She had no idea it was even a thing in her computer. The list of commands used was ls, cd, and on a whim I was surprized to find Emacs was preinstalled as well. Her parents saw literally everything I did and still told her I hacked her computer. 🙄
I started on a commodore 64, you kids that started on a machine with a gui were coddled.
Vic-20 here. What a time to be alive.
TRS-80 then IBM PCjr here. Both hand-me-downs though.
Mom wouldn’t let me on the 386 until I could touch-type and write a program in BASIC. She was a Cobol and IBM RPG programmer.
I remember BASIC from school, on the old Acorn BBCs… good times.
I started on an Antikythera mechanism, you kids that started on a modern machine were coddled.
C64 gang, represent!
Seriously though, I feel like that generation of machines was the last time you could look at hardware and say “yeah, I understand literally everything about how this works” and that knowledge has made even some of my (tech sector) coworkers think I’m a wizard
I had a GUI - windows 3.11
But it was so slow. So I made my own gui/menu system that ran in dos. I was between 9-11 I reckon.
Not sure where that lands me on the spectrum of coddledness
Yeah, it was just MSDOS. I saw “Abort, retry, fail” so many times, and I didn’t even know what it meant because I was four and I just wanted to play Family Feud with my brother.
Apple ][e was my first. We also had an XP machine for internet (Neopets) but I didn’t have to fight for turns on the Apple.
I had an Apple ][e I could use at school. It was preferable to the ][c for the same reason.
Are you joking? C64 was the bomb back in the day! My Atari and Amiga mates were enjoying colors and music and games while I had sat there on my colourless, mute PC. All I had was Flight Simulator 2 in black and white. And DrBrush for drawing in Hercules “graphics” mode.
Das wirft natürlich eine sehr interessante wissenschaftliche Forschungsfrage auf, die ich mir erlaubt habe, in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zu recherchieren:
“Does early exposure to different operating systems (macOS vs. Windows) correlate with differences in technological literacy and general problem-solving abilities among children and adolescents?”
The available research does not provide conclusive evidence that early exposure to different operating systems directly correlates with differences in technological literacy or problem-solving abilities among children and adolescents.
While studies reveal some interesting distinctions, the evidence is limited. Ronaldo Muyu et al., 2022 found Windows is more popular among university students (84.61% vs. 11.38% for macOS), suggesting potential usage differences. Shahid I. Ali et al., 2019 found no significant competency differences between Mac and Windows users in Excel skills. Cem Topcuoglu et al., 2024 noted that users’ perceptions of operating systems are often based on reputation rather than technical understanding.
Interestingly, Bijou Yang et al., 2003 found Mac users had significantly greater computer anxiety, which might indirectly impact technological literacy.
More targeted research is needed to definitively answer this question, particularly studies focusing on children and adolescents.
I did once have a Mac user describe the Bash terminal as “it looks like breaking things.”
I think early exposure to several different OS’s means you’re at least not too poor, and lack of money does correlate a lot with illiteracy of all sorts.
I think you misunderstand: the question is not about exposure to different OSes, but about the correlation/causation of a given OS to later cognitive (and other) abilities. Please do apply adequate scientific rigor here!
The point I’m making is that I believe that people who have mac skills will need to also learn Windows skills just because it’s so much more commonplace.
Just like lefties can be more empathetic on scale, because they have to face the disappointment of things not being designed for them (us, but I’m more mixed-handed than pure lefty).
It’s not about the orientation of the hand, but the phenomena surrounding having to orient your hand / use a certain hand in a certain way.
Just like I don’t believe that Mac as an OS is inherently changing the kids significantly.
Please do apply adequate scientific rigor here!
And to be fair, I don’t really know anyone who’s only ever used a mac for those exact reasons. We had a few kids in graphic design school be like “well I mostly use Mac as my personal computer is a mac”, so they weren’t as used to using Windows, since they hadn’t done it since school.
Like if you compared the linguistic capacity of people in the US, I’m pretty sure that no matter what you choose as the primary language, those kids will still know English (as we’re talking about USA here), and if they know English, then they’re at least bilingual, which has a lot of cognitive benefits. But you wouldn’t be saying that specifically speaking some specific other language makes the kids smarter.
Some languages might give certain advantages, like say some aboriginal language which doesn’t have left/right but always uses cardinal directions. Due to them doing that it’s insanely hard to confuse their inner sense of direction, even if you chuck them if a van and drive them around blindfolded.
So I’m not saying using Macs can’t have some such small specific advantage, but I doubt it, and think it’s just general adaptation skills, which do correlate with positive cognitive development.
the iphone was the beginning of the downfall
striping menue options down for usability and “natural gestures” like swiping caused a whole generation to be able to partake in internet discourse without having a basic understanding of how they got there
What about people who started on DOS?
They are either database administrators or completely oblivious to modern technology
Lies and slander.
I am a system administrator and a network administrator. I abhor database management tyvm.
Heh, me too. DBAs are to sysadmins what sysadmins are to devs
Or AmigaOS?
Or Basic 2.0?
There was a 2.0?
TIL.
I was referring to the C64 which came with Basic V2. I did have a Commodore plus/4 as well to do some programming - it came with Basic 3.5 as far as I remember.
Oooh. That version. I forgot they called that basic 2.0
Alright.
If you’re using Lemmy there’s a good chance you’ll be excluded from the study. Some of the largest Lemmy communities are Linux related.
Upvoted from my iPhone
