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Comment by megalomanu | Hacker News Reader

Author here! Thanks for all the comments. This post isn't meant as a lesson or a judgment, something to tell "just shut up and adapt like my ancestor did". The situation is hard, and I wasn't trying to dismiss anyone's anxiety. No one wants to hear "you'll be fine" when something bad just happened.

It's mostly a personal story. You can see it as a kind of tribute to a great-great-grandfather I never met, partly because I'd never heard a story like it before. It's banal but still a big adventure in the family. I find it fascinating that he grew up in a completely different world from mine and still felt some of the same doubts and anxieties I do today. And I'm really proud of him, because his "pivot" let my family stay in the village instead of maybe leaving to work in factories in the city. My father loved his job, and in a way that's thanks to him.

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I appreciate your wholesome message, but I feel a bit is overlooked.

Horses and engines are in a tangible, corporeal domain. I almost feel like pivoting could be easier with that: the tools are still the hands. Also, pivoting might be easier especially when no one is in that space of repairing cars in a small village at the time. Low competition. I also think time allowed to pivot is much higher: automobiles were expensive and time to adoption is higher, I wonder how long it took to be able to make a living?

Data, numbers, programming, this is in a ephemeral domain. Competition is high, there are a lot of developers. Time to adoption is extremely fast. In the automobile era, someone may have had five to ten years to pivot. Now? Maybe a year?

Is it about making things? Maybe, but pivoting and making a career of it is not a straight path, and sometimes people get lucky in choosing the path.

Interesting historical read:

https://historycollection.com/10-industries-either-killed-cr...

>> Many blacksmiths added the mechanical skills needed to service and repair automobiles, particularly in smaller towns and rural areas. In short order, some of the more commonly replaced automobile parts, such as tires, were being stocked by blacksmith’s, others which were necessary to a vehicle’s repair were ordered by telegraph or telephone for delivery to the blacksmith’s shop. Blacksmiths and service stations soon had competition from the automobile parts store, another new specialty which blossomed along the popularity of traveling by car.

Sounds amazing. How on earth did he go from shoeing horses to learning about the internal combustion engine? Seems quite the leap that not everyone would be capable of.

He just vibe-repaired cars!

Joke aside, it was not shoeing horses but also working on the carts, etc. Probably bikes too. So at least he reused some mechanical skills, and probably tools, he already had. Only the engine was really new.

And many people living in small villages back then had basic knowledge in many disciplines, including electricity. When you had a farm for instance, you needed to be able to repair yourself anything.

This happened to my grandfather (blacksmith to working on cars and motorcycles), who was illiterate. From what I gather, it was a lifetime of trial-and-error-and-keep-what-works.

And he was probably very inquisitive too. Great story.

Early automobiles were very simple machines. I you knew how to repair a carriage or a wagon, you were pretty close to being able to work on an early automobile. You should check them out.

Honestly I think people forget this fact. You don't have to go that far back to find vehicles that you absolutely could do anything to yourself with basic tools.

We're fixing up a 1987 Jeep Wrangler for our son. I could strip it down to the frame with 3 or 4 tools. It's kind of amazing how simple cars were, and that was in the late 80's.

Yeah as long as you ignore the engine (ECU/PCM/TCUs) in cars in the 80s, they're quite simple. Go back to the early 70s-before and it's mostly all analog or trivial electronics.

> Yeah as long as you ignore the engine (ECU/PCM/TCUs) in cars in the 80s, they're quite simple.

Alec of Technology Connections just posted a video on this:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KoeY54M5VA

Shoeing horses properly is actually no joke and cars back then were laughably simple. I don’t see how any of that could feel relatable to people in software development now, when almost all jobs that require real smarts and competency require years of study and experience.

I don't think the story is meant to be taken as literally as I'm reading in this comment.

Many people in life are underutilized and ready to step up to challenges if given the opportunity.

The flagging here is better than in a Steinberger thread. Unreal and congrats.

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