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Comment by tantalor | Hacker News Reader

> do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online

I don't see how this is different than learning how your 10-year-old garage door opener or 20-year-old furnace works.

The garage door opener works when you push a button. The furnace works when you change the little numbers on the thermostat. If it doesn't work, you call a garage door or HVAC company and they fix it. I think most people are barely aware that these things even have manuals, let alone actually sit down and read them.

No, that's how you use them. We I moved into my house I spent a good week or more tracing out where vents, pipes, and wires went. I spent time learning the parts of the furnace and built in humidifier and the different switches and knobs on them and what they do and how they do what they do. I'm no expert, buts it's helped several times already to have such an understanding.

Most people don't do this at all. Using them is all they know how to do. If it breaks, they'll have someone fix it.

The fact that you do this has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. You and I are not representative for this.

> The garage door opener works when you push a button.

What button? I've got a detached garage, so it doesn't make sense to have a button inside. And when the previous residents were (apparently) evicted, they took various keys, remotes, etc with them. I most certainly had to buy a remote and find my garage door opener's manual to get it working. Damned if I was going to pay a garage door repairman to come out and hit a few buttons for me.

This scenario is covered under "If it doesn't work, you call a garage door or HVAC company and they fix it."

Your typical HN reader is probably willing and able to reprogram the thing on their own, but this is not normal.

You say it's covered; I disagree, which is why I responded. HVAC? Maybe; it's sometimes hooked into the gas lines, with wiring through the walls and such. I feel like it's condescending to assume that most people would be unwilling or unable to pair a remote with a garage door opener, though.

"Condescending" may very well be accurate, but that doesn't make the statement wrong.

Doesn't make it true either, and you're the one making the claim.

Sure. I'm just describing what I've observed. If you don't think it's correct, that's fair. I'm just pointing out that whether or not it's condescending is a completely different question. I'll happily admit that I have a really bad attitude toward the general population's technical literacy or willingness to RTFM.

I was looking at an open house for sale earlier this year and the button to open the (detached) garage was under the edge of the counter in the kitchen like some sort of silent alarm panic switch.

I don't need to learn how a switch work if it's not "smart".

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