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Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
spacehobo@teh.entar.net ("Space Hobo") wrote:
Mastodon is full of people like me, who got into computing through LISP or Unix or some other system that unfurls vast complex structures from interactions of simple rules. It's a delightful intellectual exercise, and a powerful device to express your cleverness and ability into incantations that have immediate time-saving effects.
But when I once tried to explain this feeling to a friend when I was at Uni in the 90s, she looked at my Slackware box that I was gushing about and asked me a question that stuck with me:
"Yeah, but can it do spellcheck?"
I mean, of *course* it could. The whole demo video for Unix in the 80s featured bwk demonstrating how you could write your own spellchecker in a quick shell pipeline! I could probably find all sorts of interactive curses-driven tools to make corrections easier, or drive everything through really plush EMACS macro sets. Why, I could...
No, that wasn't what she was trying to say to me. She was saying "I really don't see computers as an intellectual exercise: they're just a tool I have to use to write my papers, and I *need* it to be reliable and straightforward for me to do that." I was literally going out of my way to make things harder, because I saw a benefit to me in doing this. Most people can't justify that kind of time and attention on something.
So when I got back into cycling a decade ago, I vowed not to learn anything about bicycle mechanics. I can't even change a tyre: I just got the tyres that don't get punctures. I don't need to put a chain back on anything because I got a bike that doesn't lose its chain. I don't have to grease the chain because it's enclosed. If I have a problem, I take the bike to a local bike shop. Don't ask me about gear ratios: I just need it to do spellcheck at the press of a button!