💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › phlog › response-to-ja-re-smartphones… captured on 2023-03-20 at 18:31:59.
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Response to ja re: smartphones ------------------------------ SDF user ja wrote a response[1] to my recent musings[2] on dumb- vs smart-phones which I completely missed at the time. Sorry about that, ja! I must confess to having fallen behind with keeping track of some of the newer SDF phlogs. It was definitely a huge eye-opener for me to read critical thinking about smartphones from someone younger than me. Ja fondly remembers writing Python programs on his smartphone under his desk during boring high-school classes, and acredits this experience with his current interest in aptitude in programming. After I had shaken off my initial shock that anybody could actually *write code* on a smartphone touchscreen (I find just writing short English text on a smartphone tedious, and trying to use a terminal program to interact with a unix shell absolutely infuriating), I recognised that this sentiment was quite reminiscent of how many older folks feel about their C64, ZX81 or Apple II. I had always figured that the fact that more and more people were getting their first exposure to computing on phones or tables meant the looming death of this kind of early discovery of technical computing, because everything about the devices seemed, to me, to actively discourage this kind of thing. Maybe I'm wrong on that front - I'd be very happy if I were. I'm still not sure I've adjusted to the idea of high-school students having their smartphones on them during class. I didn't get my first mobile phone until my first or second year of undergraduate studies, and didn't get a smartphone (which I probably did a year or two after many other people) until just before I finished my PhD. I also didn't make much use of laptops until about the same time, so I had very definite and quite regular "offline" time in my life, even if I *was* online a lot. Knowing what I do now about how well I can think and work productively on a computer, and thinking back to how much more focussed and dilligent I remember myself being as a student, I kind of feel like I may have dodged a bullet... [1] gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/ja/phlog/2018/04/15-phones [2] gopher://circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/dumbphone-dilemma.txt