The difference a dad can make
evoke.org
evoke.org
My dad's University got a computer to help work with Indian languages (wonderful work on hardware and software for Tamil, Telugu, Devanagari done by research teams at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing Pune in the pre-unicode days). Still in high school, I got to help around organizing the library of the Indian Music Department. Later on, I wrote my own cataloging software in Emacs Lisp that kept details in a plain text file. Playing around with Slackware Linux in the early 90s definitely gave the feeling of being part of something big.
Ha, for me it was the opposite: growing up in the 90ies before Internet, my dad bought a cheap old DOS computer for the entire family on which I experimented with .bat scripting and then discovered by accident the user manual of BASIC, which was included with DOS at the time. So I was familiar with "=" as an assignment operator for variables way before I really learned about variables in school. Because of this, it took me a while to get my head around solve-for-x equations in school, but I never had any problems with the f(x) = x^2 notation, because, after all, it worked exactly like a BASIC function, and I would freak out teachers and classmate because I immediately wondered whether something like f(x, y, z) exists in math.
On the other hand, I tried teaching a classmate Visual Basic in the early 2000s, and he had the exact reaction after seeing "x = x + 1": he declared that "this is impossible and makes no sense".
Slackware in the late 90s is what got me hooked on Linux and computing in general, along with building my own AMD Sempron (i.e. inexpensive) machine from a bunch of mostly random parts I'd buy off Craigslist.
At one point in time, I knew what every single file in 'etc' was for, what every single process was, and every single listening port.
I feel bad for the younger kids learning Linux in 2019 with Centos or Ubuntu. The systems are so much more complicated, it's difficult to understand how everything is put together. Might as well be a black box like Windows or Mac.
If you want to cut your teeth on “comprehensible unix” it’s a high water mark. Reading the man pages is probably worth a few years of sysadmin experience.
I too was a Slackware user of the 90s, but I was also a BSD user. OpenBSD is simply great, and has only gotten better—not more magical.
My Mum fought tooth and nail against my Dad for me to get my first proper computer after I spent over 2 years cobbling together an ancient machine out of scraps and garbage.
I had the carcasses of 4-5 machines stashed under my bed by the time I got a single good (in the loosest sense of the word) machine to boot.
My childhood was defined by the conflict between my parents where Mum tirelessly defended my right to learn.
Fathers are incredibly powerful and they can make a difference. Whether that difference is positive or negative depends on the father in question. I have slowly rebuilt my relationship with my own father over many years, but we will never be close. It hurts.
> Fathers are incredibly powerful and they can make a difference.
In good or bad. I am acutely aware of this with my own children.
Lack of having makes one resourceful. Look at today's world where just about every child in the developed world has a smart phone. Do they care about computing and how computers work, or are they merely appliances to today's generation? Most kids today know as much about an HVAC system as they do about the internal workings of a PC: nothing.
Many people I know got their first car via building it themselves from a junker. How many upper middle class kids did that? Those kids were building valuable skills that translated to a career. Same for people piecing together and fixing old computers. What skills do today's kids get? Expert level knowledge of emojis? The hacker mentality is gone for the new generation of computer users because everything already exists.
It sound's like he thought giving you a computer wasn't the best thing for you. Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. If it's true that he fought for what he believed was best regarding your welfare, then he was doing that part of his "dad job" well.
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." -- Mark Twain
Could you say a little more about what you mean by this phrase?
However, I grew up not only without a father, but without support to go into any science/technological related field ("You need qualifications, you won't get them, you won't amount to anything- plumber is a great job for your skills" etc.), Yet I'm considered to be pretty good at what I do now.
I wonder just how much of her success could be attributed to the supportive father, I doubt it was the entire reason she had the passion she did.
Encouragement is only one form of support, honesty is the other. ;- ) My father was complicated, but I remember reorienting myself as a (very young) kid when I heard that what I was doing would make my life miserable.
P.S. suspend disbelief for a second, consider that maybe Melinda may have seen something in Bill that she didn't in her childhood, and that maybe there's more to it than you'd initially think.
1. Buy me a laptop and install Ubuntu on it, instead of Windows, so my first OS was Linux. And I'm talking about 11-years-ago Linux for a 9yo kid.
2. Drill into me the importance of English. For non-English speakers, I believe this is the one true barrier of entry. All docs, forums, videos, etc. are English-first, and by the time they get translated into other languages it's no longer cutting-edge, so if you can't read English you are stuck with the "old" technologies.
Thanks, dad!
This. My parents don't really do IT and I wasn't old enough to pick it up from my grandfather, but both parents realised how important English is and made sure I spoke it already at a fairly young age. I'd never have been able to get into IT without it.
Can’t mothers do the same? (Once the child is born, obviously.)
After the birth, I am not sure how would that work.
And giving babies for adoption is a thing, and not just in an anonymous “drop it somewhere where they will take care of it” sense.
I support abortion, but I also support "financial abortion" for unwilling fathers (same as currently exists for sperm donnors).
In most jurisdictions, giving a child up for adoption legally requires the consent of both biological parents; it is not something the birth mother can do unilaterally. (Courts do have the power to override the requirement for consent of either or both parents; but, they have to give each parent the opportunity to be heard in court first.) So, when it comes to adoption, the position of the mother and the father are more parallel than you present it as.
On the other hand, this US website [1] suggests that fathers do have a right to assume the father figure (so you're right), although their rights are still lesser than a mother's ("Most states require a birth father to provide financial support to the pregnant mother, and failure to do so may result in the birth father being unable to stop an adoption.").
Although I wonder if in the case where the father assumes custody, the mother (who wanted to give up the child for abortion) would be required to pay child support or not (the website suggests "no", but isn't very explicit on this topic).
[1] https://www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/birth_father_isnt...
Laws permitting that sort of thing only exist in certain jurisdictions. All 50 US states now have laws allowing parents to anonymously abandon infants to certain "safe places" (such as hospitals, fire stations, etc)–usually it is limited to the first 30 days or so of life. However, many of those laws are actually written so that either birth parent can legally do this, although in practice it would mainly be the mother. Also, if the other parent is aware this has happened, they can intervene and object to the process. By contrast, in England and Wales, for either parent to do this is a criminal offence (although they are unlikely to be prosecuted in practice)
> Although I wonder if in the case where the father assumes custody, the mother (who wanted to give up the child
In general, most child support statutes are written in a gender-neutral way. The custodial parent can claim financial support from the non-custodial parent, irrespective of their genders. (Or even, in some cases of joint and equal custody, one custodial parent may be able to claim support from the other.) So, even though in practice it mostly involves non-custodial fathers paying money to custodial mothers, if the father has custody, the mother can be made to pay child support. Even though it is less common, it can and does happen [1]
In one case of which I am personally aware, here in Australia, the mother had full custody of two boys. But, she wasn't sending the boys to school (among other issues); so their father went to court, and got full custody of them awarded to him instead. Legally he has the right to claim child support from her, although it is unlikely in practice he's going to get any significant money out of her (she's unemployed and of no fixed address, etc.)
[1] https://aifs.gov.au/publications/family-matters/issue-86/mot...
Men are forced to pay child support. Either if they want the child or not. Woman in almost every state, can choose to abort if they don't want to raise the child or at least monetarily support it. Men have no choice.
Think about how it actually works in reality, and it is obvious women are at a disadvantage. Toy example: man hurts back, can’t work, can’t pay support. Woman hurts back, still has to look after child and work.
Also, if you read my comment and the original article, support payments are obviously not a substitute for actual parenting.