Rebuilding the Computer Room | Hacker News Reader

Rebuilding the Computer Room

alexwlchan.net

124 pointsingve66 comments

The way he describes using his computer (dedicated PC, laptop in drawer, phone left on charge) is exactly how I use my tech and always have (as phones and laptops became more portable/available).

I'm in the weird position of been a programmer who likes computers and dislikes basically all other consumer technology (phones, laptops, consoles, most domestic smart devices etc).

I don't like interruptions, technology serves the user not the other way around and should always be pull not push (in my personal opinion).

You're not alone.

I think everything peaked in 2014, phones were firmly "second" devices and there was a lower expectation that people were glued to them constantly.

Laptops had crappy batteries and performed significantly worse for more money, so were only used by the dedicated. (or, the rich in the case of some software devs in SV/London).

Most people still had desktops and using computers was its own "thing", then you went away and lived your life.

Now we're terminally online, internet culture is the pervading culture of the west... I've never liked computers less than now... but I still love computers :(

I have the feeling many more people feel similar. I loved the intentionality of sitting behind your computer with purpose back then. There was always something you’d want to do and when that was done you’d search for the next thing to do.

Yes, around that time I had a laptop for work and it was an expectation that it would stay in the office at night. At least for one job you had to tell IT if it was leaving the office. But also no one wanted to bring the things home, you logged off at the end of the day and walked away from it.

I have a desktop for work and no work phone, so I leave at the end of the day and they cannot make me do anything until the next morning.

I also live in a mythical land where software engineers have contracted hours and they have to pay me more or give me time off the next pay period if they have me work more than 37.5 hours in a week.

On the other hand, my take home is 40% of what it was in America, and the tech stack is a decade behind.

I agree but didn’t the iPhone come out around 2007? Wouldn’t that be the date rather than 2014?

Release date != saturation date

The first iphone was a very limited device. It didn't have 3G, you were still effectively tethered to WiFi.

> phones were firmly "second" devices

There's a (claimed?) stereotype that Millennials don't buy things on their phones, even if they are already browsed to the "buy now" page they'll conduct the actual transaction (and perhaps comparison-shop) on a laptop or desktop.

It makes sense to me, so I'm not sure if it's actually a reverse-dig accusing younger generations of doing the opposite and being unthinking consumers.

Either way, it's interesting when you consider how some "social media" (i.e. Tiktok) may partly be about changing how people shop, rather than (just) profit from ads.

[0] https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/28/tiktok-wants-w...

Some purchases are phone purchases, some are computer purchases.

Flight tickets? Computer purchase.

Tickets for a show? ... phone purchase.

A laptop? Computer purchase.

A pair of shoes or a book? ... phone purchase.

etc;

(I think it comes down to a combination of: how good are the apps and websites, how many steps it takes, plus how much it costs to do it wrong)

I didn't carry a cell phone for long enough (I do now) that people looked at me like I was nuts. I viewed a cell phone the same way most people thought of a pager (remember those things?) - for other people's convenience, not mine. If I am talking to someone in the hall, they will answer their phone, like people that call are more important? Thankfully I think people have realized that - some of the time.

nit: author lists their pronouns as they/she

I was hoping to see photos here but I didn't see any photo. That's kind of a shame because the write-up was pretty good.

> My primary computer is now a desktop with a large monitor, and I’m fortunate to have a room I can use as an office. I also have a laptop, but I only use it when I leave the house – otherwise, it lives in a drawer under my desk.

Pretty normal isn't it? I wouldn't say this is anything different to what a lot of people already do

> Yet, some physical restrictions remained – laptops were still heavy and bulky objects. They were something you had to carry in bags, and not something you’d take out casually. There were lots of places where you’d never see or use a laptop.

They have been sleek and capable enough for over 17 years. The first Aluminum Macbook can do everything I still require of my latest Macbook from anywhere.

> There’s a growing trend among Gen Z to resist the all-in-one allure of the smartphone, and go back to dedicated devices. They’re swaping their smartphones for single-purpose tools like point-and-shoto cameras or dedicated MP3 players, devices that lack the ability to receive notifications. I haven’t gone that far yet, but it’s something I’m considering.

For me this would create more clutter and require more of my attention to ensure the devices work the way I want them to and that I have them on hand. Yes my MP3 player doesn't show notifications but its another device I need to keep with me and keep charged. Buying a device for the sake of it unless I have a real need just feels like consumerism.

I think we're in the minority here. Or at least we absolutely were in the minority until 2020 when everyone started working from home, many kept it that way, and a somewhat dedicated (even if temporary) spot had to be found.

But I know so many people (who don't work from home) who put their laptop on their living room or kitchen table, or the couch.

People who game on PC are probably also an outlier, but many of those again use it mostly for gaming and not as their main machine.

> For me this would create more clutter and require more of my attention to ensure the devices work the way I want them to and that I have them on hand. Yes my MP3 player doesn't show notifications but its another device I need to keep with me and keep charged. Buying a device for the sake of it unless I have a real need just feels like consumerism.

I was skeptical until I kidnapped my wife's kindle and started reading on that instead of my phone. I recently added an mp3 player too and there really is something about the intentionality of a dedicated device that make it more enjoyable and more focused than using my phone for everything.

But to your point, there is definitely a lot of performative/consumerism basis - if you visit the Emulator subreddit for example there's an increasingly common joke that nobody ever uses their device, just buys the new one to collect it/post it online for internet points.

I agree there is a balance, if the separate device gives you more functionality and enhances the experience over the mobile phone, then I can understand the benefit.

I have a Kindle as well as I find the iPhone screen way too small to read from.

My working computer still is a stationary desktop computer. I still need to go somewhere to use a real computer. Love that. I do not like smartphones. Surveillance devices.

FWIW I was there few years ago then, as mentioned in a recent comment, moved away from iPhone to deGoogle Android (relying on /e/OS) then GrapeheneOS using nearly exclusively open-source software on it with nearly no dark patterns. It's far from perfect I feel a lot saner now. I don't necessarily advocate for smartphones but I still want to point out some smartphone tailored to your own usage can be less intrusive and surveil radically less, if at all.

Some time ago I realized it was actually helpful to set up multiple workstations so the place I go to write code isn't the same as the place I go to browse hn and watch youtube.

Yes, as an computer addictive (like me), this is also a great strategy. In my basement I set up a computer just for music production, nothing else. Right besides the modern production computer is my Atari ST I do sequencing with. This thing even doesn't have a network connection (although it would be possible).

Part of this is modern house construction too (at least where I live in Europe); the living room / kitchen is just one big room, and upstairs there's two bedrooms (one of which can be split up).

I simply don't have the space to dedicate a room for one specific function. I'd love to be able to e.g. have a guest/living room with no tech, an office room for working, etc on top of separate bedrooms for everyone, but that's only possible now in older houses starting at €600,000 in the more remote parts of the country.

The whole point of the article is that families found spaces in their house to fit in a computer and it became the computer room even if it served other purposes.

> At my grandparents’ house, it was their office in the corner of the house. Their desktop PC was far from the kitchen, bedrooms, and living room, sandwiched between the coat rack and the washing machine.

In my house, the computer room was just our spare bedroom which ended up being the bedroom that my cousin lived in when we moved in with us to finish high school. I remember bugging my mom while she was playing solitaire, free cell, or minesweeper to see if I could use the computer to play Civilization 3 or Roller Coaster Tycoon.

At my friend's house it was a little inset desk on the middle floor of their split level that doubled as their dad's office. At my aunt's house it was a deck in the back of their living room next to their CD collection.

It was never a room completely devoted to the computer, but to the person who used the computer the most it became the computer room.

> The smartphone tooked this further

Normally I'd laugh when I see a silly typo like that, but nowadays it's refreshing to see a thoughtfully human-written article with little imperfections here and there.

Mild grammar issues and typos used to annoy me; now I appreciate them as indications of real human connection.

Just wait until people clue into this and start prompting their models to introduce typos on purpose.

That's why I have my LLM sprinkle some into "my" writing...

>The laptop was the first device to test the walls of the computer room. Early laptops were limited compared to desktop computers – they were slower, battery-constrained, satellite devices to your main machine.

Smells like AI writing the research or at least someone that never saw the 80s. The portable PC era, e.g. Olivetti M18 and competition, were the short lived bridge between desktop and laptop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_computer

> When I walk into my office and sit at my desk, I’m choosing to be there. When I walk away, I have a door I can close, and a life outside the room that the digital world is no longer allowed to reach.

Being intentional is hard, and a little friction helping it is welcome. But I do hope for myself that I can be intentional in everything that I do (this includes having fun, being with family, and even doomscrolling).

The sad thing about phones being he primary (and in many case the only) computing devices for most people is that they lose the possibility of separating the tasks that the do on the phone vs the tasks that they do on a computer.

That’s the entire point of why people use a smartphone as their primary device: they don’t want the hassle of having to use a computer. And for normal people (ie not the readership of HN), using a computer is a chore.

I agree that it can be a chore, but more like, I'll use a real computer for serious tasks like doing my taxes, administration, planning vacations, etc.

This is still the case for non-techie Millennials and older. But for the younger generations who might have grown up with a smartphone as their only personal device, the distinction of task importance determining the platform has disappeared.

Is it just the younger generation? I’ve seen all generations favour their phone over a laptop for anything that needs to be done online. Which is basically everything.

Of course they do, it is one device that is convenient to use and does everything they need it to.

Most people really do not need the dedicated device, whether it's a laptop or desktop, to use the Internet they way they want to.

You’re just reiterating what I said

Everyone is gravitating to the phone, but habit is an enduring force. Some people will always use a computer for specific tasks as they learned for the rest of their life. I think most of us are in that camp.

Yes, but most of us are not typical users of technology.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48719107

But if you aren’t technical and everything is done online, then it’s easier for non-techies to do it on their phone.

Yeah, normal people look at me funny when I am "out and about" and they want me to do something on a random website and my reply is: "naw, I will look at that when I am back at a real computer"....

I have had every type of computing device, including pre-smart phone PDA's, and ultimately when I need to do something that isn't mediated by an "app", I will always gravitate towards doing it on an actual computer.

Now - while I do prefer a laptop as my primary machine - it is essentially a desktop, as I typically use it 90% of the time attached to either a dock at home or the office, with external screens, keyboard and mouse.

(Heck - my latest machine only gets about 75m of battery life... it is more a luggable than a "work-at-the-beach" kind of machine (i9, lots of ram, etc.) - and I am perfectly happy with that arrangement)

Smartphones are computers. There's no difference between what you can do in a "real" computer and what you can do on a smartphone. I wrote an entire programming language inside my Android phone with Termux. Perhaps the first language to be born inside a mobile phone.

Any limitations on smartphones are either ergonomic or entirely artificial.

Technically true but practically you know what people mean when they say that, right? Do you think there’s a 3D artist out there that models and renders something in blender on a smartphone?

Blender started working on this about a year ago (https://code.blender.org/2025/07/beyond-mouse-keyboard/) but it appears to be on hold for now (https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/142346?_...).

That’s the point, technically you’ll be able to do it but it doesn’t really make sense

> There's no difference between what you can do in a "real" computer and what you can do on a smartphone.

In fact, it kind of runs the other way: even my "portable" "real" computer is terrible as, say, a camera, or level. It's a bad GPS navigation device, both due to the form factor and it's entirely lacking the hardware for it (technically they can have this, but very few do).

There are lots of things my phone can do that even my laptop, let alone my desktop, practically can't.

My point wasn't really about the capability of a phone compared to a computer. I have thoughts on that but it's not the point I was making.

Assigning tasks to devices can be done due to the capabilities of each device but also due to other factors, like what behaviour you want to influence. For example, if you want to spend less time doom-scrolling/on social media/whatever, moving these tasks outside of the computer you have in your pocket and into the computer you need to sit in front of helps.

>> Any limitations on smartphones are either ergonomic or entirely artificial.

Wanted to add here they are also fixable. Most phones can be used with a keyboard, monitor and mouse. Reading from a phone or tablet on a beach beats doing so on a laptop! Most of all people continue to create improved tools for voice recognition.

If your language is indeed the first to be born in a mobile phone, after all this time, that would rather suggest that there is a difference. Ergonomic differences and artificial restrictions are still differences and restrictions.

Maybe the difference is nobody else was crazy enough to try.

Uh huh. And why is it crazy?

There is a weird dichotomy developing between tasks that can be done on a particular device. If a given app or property is "cross-platform" then I can install the Android version, and the PWA version or visit a website and access it on Chromebook. But they do not have feature parity.

Now in the past, it was because the "desktop version" was more featureful/powerful due to the constrained resources of the mobile platform. This still holds true; even though mobile computing resources aren't constrained, the UI and display can be, somewhat.

But also the mobile app may exhibit some features unavailable on "desktop"! Because of the nature of the sensors and secure platform, you can have sophisticated features available on your smartphone that aren't possible to replicate on any other platform. Nearly every built-in Google app is like this and if you read the documentation, you can easily see the differences.

And of course there's the mobile-only apps that malfunction or refuse to install on Chromebook, like a ride share or something that's actually designed to be used "out and about" in meatspace.

So there are many times when I am lying in bed, for example, phone in hand, and I attempt some task and realize that the features I want are only available on "desktop" version, and then I got to make a mental note to address that when I'm on "desktop". Or vice versa, I'm puttering away on the Chromebook and it balks at something I'll need to use my phone for. Or the worst-case scenario is when I need to have 2-3 devices all directly at hand to do some dumb thing like printing out a page! AUGH!

gee this chap is young if imac g3 was his first computer. or i'm old.

It’s the latter, I’m afraid. I thought the same thing!

You know you are getting old (insert AI generated meme) when your default of "20 years ago" was the 80's... Nope...

Not OP, but the iMac G3 was discontinued before I was even born!

Point being, I still wish we could return to the "computer room" era. I personally use a Desktop machine for most tasks (I also play games) so I imagine there is a decent overlap with gamers + general desktop PC users.

I kind of forget that a lot of people don't use a PC as their "primary" computing device. Every assessment, every game, every job application, every email sent and received has been consumed via a Desktop PC.

Funnily I had a discussion with someone I barely met yesterday. They commented on my reMarkable Pro, wondering if I liked it.

We discussed a bit and while doing so I pullet out both my paper notepad, my phone but also my XR headset (which just happened to be in my backpack). I also use a bottlecap to sketch in the sand.

My point : anything, literally anything, goes. You can have the best of tools yet think poorly about the most pointless problem. You can have nothing at all, no tool, being in the middle of a very noisy place... and still tackle this brilliantly. If you are flexible and if you tailor YOUR tools to YOUR usage, anywhere and anything should be "good enough".

TL;DR: thinking happens in the mind and only optionally extending it via tools.

In retrospect MY first computer, not my parents or school computer, was not a desktop but rather a pocket calculator that I needed for mathematics.

When I noticed I could program on it it definitely expanded my horizon. I was not bound to a desk though and I programmed anywhere. It was a very excited feeling, still is. It does NOT mean being available 24/7 for others though.

FWIW I do also have a computer room with a tower desktop. It's very convenient. I'm not convinced I do my best thinking there. It's mostly convenient to execute, to drill. The actual thinking though happens anywhere, I don't really get to decide where and when.

Come back when your computer is in a room with a raised floor (for cabling), tremendous AC, and windows in walls so a passer-by can look in and see the tapes rotating. Geezer here.

> Laptops became more convenient for more types of task, and soon they were good enough to be your primary computing device.

> My primary computer is now a desktop with a large monitor, ...

I own several laptops: they're simply inferior computing devices due to their mediocre screen and pathetic keyboards. I'm laying on the couch while typing this on a laptop. That's what it's good for.

My actual workstation has a 38" ultra-wide. Wife's got, in our office room, next to my ultra-wide 38" monitor, a desktop setup with three monitors. She likes screen real-estate too. We've got a T-shaped shared desk, with the multifunction printer/scanner in the middle, "separating" us.

But that's not all: I've got a 38" ultra-wide that does 3840x1600 and there are 12 virtual desktops on it, all carefully arranged.

Friends of mine had a company doing 3D and post-prod for ads and short movies: I don't even remember ever seeing one laptop at their company.

To me a laptop is a stamp-sized version of a desktop: it's asking Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa on a stamp.

Do I, at times, do actual work on my 17" LG Gram laptop (a very sweet and very light laptop)? Yes. But I hate every second of it.

It's really not to "compartiment" your life and not always be connected that you should prefer your own chair, your own desk, your gigantic screen real-estate and your fat desktop to a laptop: it's because it's a superior way of working.

Invest in a good chair. Invest in a good keyboard. Invest in big monitor(s). You'll thank me later.

P.S: you're excused if you hook a powerful laptop to a proper keyboard, a proper mouse and fat monitor(s). But then that's basically a desktop.

P.P.S: as a bonus your desktop can use a good old wired Internet connection.

> I own several laptops: they're simply inferior computing devices due to their mediocre screen and pathetic keyboards

This is the kind of problem that can be remedied using a cable and a suitable docking station, anytime you are near the desk.

I think, weirdly, the problem with modern laptops is the opposite - the screens and keyboards (particularly on flagship models) are good enough that 90% of the time you don't need the 38" monitor or the mechanical keyboard. Which leads to them invading spaces far from your desk, like your couch, or your bed...

The invasion issue is also further remediated by using a "workstation style" laptop which only gets 60-75m of battery life (plus also weighs far too much to be used on your actual "lap")...

> To me a laptop is a stamp-sized version of a desktop: it's asking Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa on a stamp.

Da Vinci painted the actual Mona Lisa on a small panel of wood. Similarly, people do good work on laptops. A MacBook was pretty much the standard-issue piece of dev equipment at every job I've held over the past decade. Of course as "creature comforts" I wire them in to my full-sized mechanical keyboard and huge-ass monitor. But the computer itself is more than up to the task and can be used on the go in a pinch.

Over the years, I have accumulated a really sweet desk setup: standing desk, Herman Miller chair, Kinesis Advantage, BenQ programming monitor, nice lighting, decent audio setup, etc. I have a dedicated office, entirely separated from the rest of the house.

It's great, but I think being dependent on all that stuff can make you soft. I still do some of my best work from my laptop in the garden, coffee shops, the library, etc.

To each their own.

"I can focus on the things that actually deserve my attention – cooking a meal, reading a book, chatting with my friends, playing on the sofa. I’m less worried about the distraction of my digital devices, or the effect it has on my life."

Am I the only one who've heard about that "do not disturb" mode on phones?

Default 'Do Not Disturb' on android still lets heaps of notifications through.

Additionally, when I do have my phone silenced completely, (or on an airplane without wireless), I still find myself reaching for the phone and checking anyway. It's a physical tic, and the only way to break it is to not have the phone near you.

Good writeup

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