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- Hacker News
- 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.by egl2020
- 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.
by utopiah - 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.
by utopiah - gee this chap is young if imac g3 was his first computer. or i'm old.by uwagar
- It’s the latter, I’m afraid. I thought the same thing!by agalarz
- 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.by wrxd
- 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.
- 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.by hnlmorg
- 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!
- > 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).
by Aperocky - >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.
by 1970-01-01 - > 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.
by farmerbb - Just wait until people clue into this and start prompting their models to introduce typos on purpose.by littlekey
- That's why I have my LLM sprinkle some into "my" writing...by linsomniac
- Mild grammar issues and typos used to annoy me; now I appreciate them as indications of real human connection.by kylemaxwell
- 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.
by Cthulhu_ - 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.
by rockostrich - 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.by Aldipower
- 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.by c22
- 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.by utopiah
- > 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.
by NoPicklez - > 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.
by CagedCoder - 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.
by wink - 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.by orliesaurus
- 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).
by noir_lord - nit: author lists their pronouns as they/sheby eutropia
- 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.by jolt42
- 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 :(
by dijit