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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

In other news: I taught my children how to hook up the buggy to the horse. Then I pulled out my great grandfather's Model T and worked them through how to adjust the spark and planning their stops because it didn't have normal brake pads. Then I taught them how to drive stick in a car that requires double-clutching because it doesn't have synchromesh...

I honestly don't "get" this need to raise our children with a state of technology like we had when we were kids. My kids use tablets, and when they want/need to use a full powered computer I'll just show them how to use one.

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>In other news: I taught my children how to hook up the buggy to the horse. Then I pulled out my great grandfather's Model T and worked them through how to adjust the spark and planning their stops because it didn't have normal brake pads.

You joke but a lot of learning comes from things like this.

>I honestly don't "get" this need to raise our children with a state of technology like we had when we were kids

It's basically like if I want to understand unix better -- I actually find tutorials written in the 70/80s much better than some of the stuff you see on YouTube or more modern tutorials -- even with all there inaccuracies in terms of getting to grip the core concepts it often gets straight to the point.

>It's basically like if I want to understand unix better -- I actually find tutorials written in the 70/80s much better than some of the stuff you see on YouTube or more modern tutorials

Or even the 90ies/early 2000.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32013779#32015159

The real problem with your analogy is that the command line is more advanced than the GUI. That's why advanced users use it and beginners do not.

To borrow an expression: reading and writing is more advanced than pointing and grunting.

I'll be the odd man out amongst the responses and agree with you.

Not everyone needs/wants to be a software engineer or other kind of computer savvy person. The majority of people get along with life just fine these days with just a smartphone and/or tablet as their only computing device.

Now the caveat to this is, what if your child is the next potential super rockstar ninja pirate 100x SWE in waiting? I suppose there is nothing wrong with trying to get them interested in computers.

I kinda wonder how I would raise my own future kid when I hear stories of superstars in various realms ranging from musicians* to Formula1 drivers, etc. Most of them started extremely young - young enough that the decision to get them involved was their parents', not their own.

* I had a friend who was an absolute kickass cellist. However he claimed he would never advance beyond the ranks of a school music teacher because he started the instrument at age 8 whereas the real talent start before age 5. It boggled my mind.

> Not everyone needs/wants to be a software engineer or other kind of computer savvy person.

Most people need to interact with a computer for work or pleasure. Not everybody needs to be able to engineer enterprise grade software, but what's the downside to having everybody be able to write a bash script? Lots of people's jobs could be easier with a little command line fu.

We teach lots of core competencies to kids for this reason. You don't need to be a writer to benefit from knowing how to write well, but writing can also help in myriad careers, social settings and even be an artistic outlet. Coding is the same way. I can code for work, but I can also compose music with code or solve puzzles.

The difference here is that the command line is still a valuable tool. It's not obsolete. And your kids may not be interested in learning how computers work if they've never needed to figure them out to get to what they want.

Turn in your hacker membership. Those sound fun to be honest.

There's a reason we teach kids arithmetic on paper before how to use a calculator.

xmonad came out in 2007, it's not that old

display manager vs typing `startx` on login isn't old vs modern either

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