Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Sat, 25 Oct 2003
The death of computer hobbyists?
John Dvorak laments the decline of
computer hobbyists. Like John, I got involved with computers as a hobby. I do think that his definition of hobbyist is a bit narrow. According to him, if you aren't collecting oddball hardware, then you aren't a hobbyist. I've always been a hobbyist on the software side -- I learned to program by typinging programs from Byte, Creating Computing, and Dr. Dobbs Journal, learning how they worked as I typed. Today, I believe that the opportunity for software hobbyists is larger than ever. Hobbyists that want to program computers have more avenues that allow them to contribute to software that will be used by real people. The same avenues provide lots of source code that hobbyists can use to learn from. I am referring of course, to open source software in its various forms.
It may be true that there's not much excitement for the hardware side of computers as a hobby, unless you like lighting up the insides of your case. But on the software side, there's plenty of opportunities.
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4 Comments |
Seems like one interesting area for hardware would be in experimenting with form factors. There was an article in the Denver Post yesterday about people using this tiny motherboard to build non-traditional PCs (aka "stealth PCs"). One guy built a PC that fit inside a breadbox, another one built a case that was covered in artificial grass, etc. The idea is to create a PC that doesn't look like a computer. I thought that was a pretty neat idea, I've been sick of the oatmeal colored box concept for a long time.
Posted by Gordon Weakliem at Mon Oct 27 10:22:29 2003
Posted by Gordon Weakliem at Mon Oct 27 10:22:29 2003
Perhaps this is progress? As the computer has become commodity (to the point of customisations (heh-no lowercase Z in feedreader)) the advance of custom applications is growing--almost to a similar commodity status in the form of Lego Mindstorms to Open Source. :-)
Posted by DeanG at Mon Oct 27 12:24:43 2003
Posted by DeanG at Mon Oct 27 12:24:43 2003
There is still a good bit of hardware hacking going on, but it's not like the old days of Circuit Cellar and Byte. Then again one IC with the right software can do now what those old designs I slaved over for night after night after night took an entire shelf of circuits to do. So maybe not one chip, but then the VIA Epia series gives you mostly that in a 6.5" square low noise, low heat form. Just a matter of writing the code to get it to do what you need and drop it onto a 32MB CF card. All for about $100.
Posted by Eric at Fri Oct 31 23:21:49 2003
Posted by Eric at Fri Oct 31 23:21:49 2003
Both the systems and software have become much too complicated. With an Apple II or TRS-80 it was possible for a high-schooler to get a grasp of the entire system. That seems out of reach these days. It was also possible for a high-schooler to learn enough to write (for instance) a cutting edge game, but those efforts are now well beyond one person efforts, unfortunately.
Posted by David Williamson at Tue Nov 4 14:36:03 2003
Posted by David Williamson at Tue Nov 4 14:36:03 2003
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