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Comment by montblanc | Hacker News Reader

> Maps, and the ability to read them.

You basically need another passenger with you otherwise you'll have to do a lot of stops. I'd even say its a bit risky to drive like that.

> Phones, you know good old land lines

So you are saying having a high def video call with my brother living across the world, for free, is just like calling him in the 60s? It used to be crazy expensive to call abroad. And you couldn't see!

> Why do I need physical photos stored in the cloud?

Do you physically develop all your photos? If you do you are an exception to the rule, most people develop maybe 1% of their photos.

> Have ya heard of libraries?

Come on now. Try learning C++ in a library, good luck with that. Also, it's only the rich world that has high quality libraries accessible to everyone.

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So many misunderstandings in here, probably because you're too young to have done any of these things. (Source: I am pushing 50.)

Driving with maps doesn't require another passenger or a lot of stops, generally. You plan your route with the map before starting out, and if necessary write the turns on a piece of note paper. You may need to stop and consult the map if you miss a turn. I'll grant that GPS is more convenient, but maps worked better than you think they did.

Phones vs. video calls, I'll mostly grant you. Long distance calls were expensive, and video gives you facial and body language cues. On the other hand, audio quality was a lot higher when everyone was on land lines, so you didn't need those cues as much to make up for indistinct audio.

Physical photos: before 2000 or so, everyone developed all of their photos. Most cameras were film, then. Even when digital cameras came into widespread use, it was common to print the best pictures. People really only started not developing photos when smartphones became common.

Libraries: I learned C from a couple of textbooks, and C++ (such as it was in 1993) from a book published by the company that sold me the compiler. All of these would have been available in a reasonably sized library, or in a small library via interlibrary loan.

> I learned C from a couple of textbooks, and C++ (such as it was in 1993) from a book published by the company that sold me the compiler.

You ignored that part of my argument about only the rich world having high quality libraries. What if you'r from India or Africa or even rural America? Now even a poor Indian can solve Hackerrank challenges on his phone. It's not as easy or as convenient but it's much better than his prospects 30 years ago.

Unfamiliar cities could certainly be more challenging to drive around prior to GPS, you got lost more often, and yes you often needed to have a paper map. It took me a while before I really developed a decent mental map for driving around the Boston area. But I find people seemingly arguing that travel to unfamiliar places was this daunting task absent GPS availability rather amusing.

For photos I shot B&W (which I printed selectively) and then slides. But most people just took their roll of print film to the pharmacy or whatever and got a stack of 3 1/2" x 5" color prints back.

> You basically need another passenger with you otherwise you'll have to do a lot of stops. I'd even say its a bit risky to drive like that.

Oh, FFS. Pre-GPS, I would look up my destination on a map or street atlas and learn the route. If a portion was especially tricky, I might jot down a few reminders, or pull over before that leg and review the map.

Is GPS a wonderful convenience, especially with traffic monitoring & such?

Hell yeah, I love it and wouldn't want to go back to maps without a damn good reason.

But don't pretend it's somehow vital.

> So you are saying having a high def video call with my brother living across the world, for free, is just like calling him in the 60s?

The vast majority don't use video calling.

Still, constantly available communication is, IMO, a huge net positive.

> Do you physically develop all your photos?

That was obviously how it worked before ubiquitous digital cameras.

Photo situation is better today, though I might argue that the low marginal cost of each photo leads to people robbing themselves of vivid memories of what they're seen. There's some research that supports that idea, though I don't have a reference immediately on hand.

> Come on now. Try learning C++ in a library, good luck with that.

That's exactly what I did. Checked the ARM out of the library. Eventually bought my own copy when I decided it was worth it.

As much as I love the wealth of information available on the net, I sometimes miss how good libraries used to be.

I’m not trying to be condescending but I’m guessing you’re pretty young?

>> Try learning C++ in a library, good luck with that.

How do you think people learnt to code before the internet? I borrowed large textbooks on Basic/VB, C++, and Turbo Pascal from friends and libraries. And this wasn’t a long time ago. I did this as recently as 2005.

>> Do you physically develop all your photos? If you do you are an exception to the rule, most people develop maybe 1% of their photos.

Why would you take photos and not develop them? When I finish a roll I take it to the local store and they develop the photos. I then put them in an album or store them in another way. People have been doing this for a long time.

>> So you are saying having a high def video call with my brother living across the world, for free, is just like calling him in the 60s?

Most people I know disable video in meetings. The majority don’t do video calls with friends unless they have some friend that calls them that way. I find audio calls much more enjoyable that video calls and I definitely don’t think I’m in the minority there. If you haven’t seen someone in years and they live far away a video call might be nice but in most cases audio is not only enough, but better.

>> You basically need another passenger with you otherwise you'll have to do a lot of stops.

Most journeys people make repeat. You learn the route. The modern obsession with GPS is so we don’t get there a minute early or late. For infrequent, really long drives you can plan your trip in advance, noting down the steps of the journey rather than following the map constantly. It’s also amazing how far you get just following road signs when you know the general towns on your route.

> How do you think people learnt to code before the internet? I borrowed large textbooks on Basic/VB, C++, and Turbo Pascal from friends and libraries. And this wasn’t a long time ago. I did this as recently as 2005.

I'm not denying that, I'm just sating progress was way slower - especially for newcomers before the internet. Imagine trying to solve problems without Google or Stackoverflow when you're a 15 old kid trying to learn programming. You're stuck on some shitty installation of Linux or some missing package and have no idea why the compiler gives this error message. How do you even get Linux? Have no idea how they did stuff back then but it was for sure harder to just to get something up and running. So easy to give up. Programming in that era used to be something 1 in maybe 50 children tried. It was no way near as accessible as it is today.

The flip side of that is that since it's now easier for everyone to learn new skills and solve problems, the requirements and expectations from workers pretty much went up proportionally.

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