Helped uncle-in-law with computer

Computers are terrible

Windows computers are especially the worst, but tbqh computers in general are just awful terrible machines

Aunt-in-law mentioned when she was a nurse and using computers every day she was much better with them.

That's what it takes! The only way to understand a computer is to use it and relearn how to use it constantly, because the interface is always bloody changing for no reason at all!

These folks don't have dementia or anything, they just don't use the computer every day so when they need to boot it up for something, everything's moved around!

How the hell are you supposed to "learn" something that hides its important bits and constantly changes while you're trying to learn it?

Windows XP hid file extensions by default because Microsoft thought people would think they were confusing, and then when everybody ran cutekitten.jpg.exe they predictably put out a security alert saying whoops, that was a terrible idea, everyone should change these settings to show extensions. And then in Vista they hid the extensions again and then issued another security bulletin saying whoops we did it again, here's how you put it right

AND THEN THEY DID THE SAME THING AGAIN IN EVERY WINDOWS VERSION SINCE. And changed how you find the menu entry to fix it! Not even to make it easier to find! How the hell are you supposed to learn how to use a Windows box if they do this kind of crap?!

If you woke up one morning and your coffee pot had rearranged all its buttons for no reason at all, you'd chuck the damn thing in the trash! Why do we put up with this from computers?

Oh and yeah the computer is the most powerful and complex machine you'll ever use and it doesn't even come with a manual.

My kettle came with a manual! It said here's how you plug it in! It told me which button to press to turn it on and there's ONE BUTTON! It said don't fill the kettle up with milk!

MY BLOODY HAIRDRYER HAS A LABEL ON THE WIRE SAYING DON'T USE IN THE SHOWER BUT THE MACHINE THAT CAN EMPTY YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, EH, JUST JUMP IN, YOU'LL FIGURE IT OUT, PROBABLY BE FINE

It doesn't come with a manual because by the time it got printed it'd be out of date because the damn interface changed (again, I must stress, for NO DAMN REASON AT ALL).

If it stayed the same then people who don't use the computer all the time could sit down with it every now and then and get used to it.

Computers are unlearnable unless you're in bloody thrall to them.

I used to teach computers professionally, back in the Windows 98 days. Back then, and even into the XP days, you could teach someone about files and folders and it was pretty easy to grasp, made sense, things were mostly where they'd left them. These days you go to save a file in Word or whatever and where's it go? Who knows! Who cares! Don't worry about it! In the ten years since I've used Windows apparently MS decided the idea of files in folders was too complicated for people?

I swear every damn thing Microsoft does to try to make it "easier" for people just makes it more opaque, harder to understand what's actually happening.

This is why I write vanilla bloody JavaScript. Investing half my life keeping up with the dozens of ever-changing trendy ways to make it easier is actually harder than just straight-up learning that pig of a language

If computers were a car it'd have the bonnet welded shut and there'd be no temp or fuel or speed gauge 'cause they're too complicated and you don't really need to know about them, and whenever you left it alone for a little while the headlamp switch would move randomly around the interior, and smug 20somethings would make fun of you for not knowing that it's behind the bloody passenger head rest this week Christ how can a machine be so infantilizing and so dangerous at once

I completely understand why some people build their own 8-bit computers, which is bloody easier, reading a book about interrupts and address and data buses and being Done Forever or giving Bill Gates a hundred bucks for the privilege of learning to use a computer all over again every couple of years

I fix machines whose address lines run through a 40-pin connector covered in rusty mouse piss and whose unfused bridge rectifiers are a legitimate fire risk and they're more stable and reliable than modern desktop computers, seriously

Like, a Williams System 6 runs its lamp matrix through resistors that get so hot the enamel flakes off them and they desolder themselves from the board, still more dependable than a Windows box in the hands of someone whose job doesn't involve constantly taking care of a Windows box