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 'computers' and what I often see happening among my peers as well.<p>I think it's important not to only see things as a 'computer specialist', 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'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'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've mostly been working in web development since coming of age. Apparently we're reinventing the wheel badly, javascript is a pretty bad or at best mediocre language, html/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/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/unfold/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's when I get excited again about working with computers, and the progress we've made. And that'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.