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Comment by jamal-kumar | Hacker News Reader

I learned computers because in 1996 I was completely ignorant and a little kid who decided to drag everything into the recycle bin because I thought it would be 'recycled' back into place but really it just destroyed windows enough that I had to learn how to reinstall from floppies created in DOS

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I like how old OSes let you place anything in the recycle bin, or remove system files without permission (because the concept barely existed).

Simplicity at the extreme. I miss those times where hacking and learning was as easy as breaking things and repairing them. But I think this also was a source of fear against computers for most people : if I click on the wrong place, it will break and cost money.

Nowadays systems are nearly unbreakable, and that’s cool, but o boy when they break, good luck finding why.

The concept of permissions existed far before Win95 launch. At least on Unix and WinNT. As a Unix and WinNT seller, Microsoft knows it perfectly. It was also not possible on Macos to through system files in the trash bin.

Hahaha yeah I was freaking out. My whole family was pretty pissed off at me.

Good thing I had a copy of "PCs for Dummies" which told how to fix the catastrophe

Same here: "Why there are so many files? I only need the .exe to start my game." After deleting the "unnecessary" files the game woudln't work.

I went through system32 and deleted all the files that we never used, to free up disk space.

And that was the day I learned how to reinstall an OS.

Hahahaha.. same thing I did. I didn't realise there is a thing called hidden files.. I went to a folder in system32 and it seemed empty to me.. I was like let's delete it.. I deleted some 10-20 folders like these and when I try to restart the OS.. it wouldn't load.

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