As a programmer and tinkerer (hacker?) I cannot agree more with the sentiment of the article. And what follows is not a direct response to article, which I found surprisingly positive altogether, but more of a general rumination on my own relationship with &#x27;computers&#x27; and what I often see happening among my peers as well.<p>I think it&#x27;s important not to only see things as a &#x27;computer specialist&#x27;, especially if that perspective (perhaps rightfully) can lead to pessimism these days.<p>Throughout my childhood, the main reason why computers excited me was the promise of realizing all the sci-fi stuff I read about and saw on television:  tricorders, virtual reality, video communication, voice- and touch-interfaces, zoom-in-and-enhance high-resolution maps, instant access to the knowledge of the world through some kind of AI (all voice-enabled, obviously).<p>And now, all these things actually exist (to a <i>large</i> degree), and in a device that I carry in my pocket!<p>The child that I was did not for the most part care about <i>building</i> these tools, or being about the <i>modify</i> and <i>inspect</i> them. He cared about <i>using</i> them. And he&#x27;s excited about the immense progress in what feels like a very short time.<p>This adult that I am, meanwhile, has a tendency to instead mostly complain about wifi-issues, siri not picking up on my commands, inability to install flux on my phone, app crashes, the new Google Maps interface, dropped Skype calls, the state of front-end development, and so on.<p>However justified that may be, I&#x27;ve found that focusing on what that kid wants and overcoming the issues that stand in the way has been a much better motivator than focusing on that adult.<p>To name a specific example. Based on the articles and discussions here I sometimes feel a bit... sad that I&#x27;ve mostly been working in web development since coming of age. Apparently we&#x27;re reinventing the wheel badly, javascript is a pretty bad or at best mediocre language, html&#x2F;css are terrible because they were not intended for app development, npm is a shitty package manager, and so on. Sometimes I even start feeling nostalgic for the good old days by proxy.<p>But then, when I finish a little journalling&#x2F;project logging tool that scratches a personal itch, and I can instantly release that to the web and let my brother play around with it, or when I write a little bookmarklet that allows me to fold&#x2F;unfold&#x2F;upvote HN comments using the letters on my keyboard, well, then I feel good again.<p>Because then I remember that not that long ago I wrote a game in Delphi. It required trying to figure out how to so something based on random computer magazines and a single Delphi for Dummies book, it required waiting days for help from some dude in Florida who thankfully was happy to assist me. It required putting the game on a floppy disk and hoping that as it was passed along to my dad and his colleagues, it would somehow get into the hands of others.<p>That&#x27;s when I get excited again about working with computers, and the progress we&#x27;ve made. And that&#x27;s the mindset that makes it easier for me to try and think about ways to get my younger siblings and others as excited about <i>building</i> and <i>tinkering</i> as I am.