I have a 16-month-old, and if (God forbid) he turns out to be a geek, I'll have to deal with the same issue.
I grew up in a small town, and my father's shed had all the tools and space I needed. I remember ordering a 50 lb bag of potassium nitrate over the phone from a farm supply outfit, and when they asked "What do you need this for?", I joked with them "You don't want to know." I was grinding model rocket fuel in my bedroom.
The big difference today is the Internet. Nobody was around to teach me the fundamentals back then, and nobody shared my interests. I'd like to think that with an Internet connection, I would have spent less time fumbling around alone in the dark. My son may not get all the space or tools or explosives, but he'll definitely get answers to his questions.
How can you write an article about bad keyboards without describing how they feel? Only the Mattel Aquarius was described as gummy, abysmal and bouncy...
Sounds to me like the author never actually typed on most of them. It's easy to download a bunch of pics from some PC museum site and speculate about how bad their key layout, etc. was.
I remember the C64 as the most beautiful feeling keyboard of all time. The keys had a great molded shape and quiet, luxurious, damped action. Two inches tall? You're not supposed to type with your wrist on the table, man.
My TRS-80 Colour Computers (II and III) had cheap noisy keys with toy-like spring action. I can confirm the Timex Sinclair had not only an impractical layout, but the worst feel of anything I've ever used. Typing was so difficult that you could enter keywords with just one press ("GOTO"!). Somehow that didn't make it any better.
Are you suggesting that the CS curriculum should be designed around solving your little practical problems?
I'm a Mechanical Engineer as well. Are you suggesting that _we_ should have spent our degrees studying look-up charts for HVAC ducts, or how to make nice Excel graphs? (calculus, mechanics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, ring any bells?)
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Couldn't they find a better acronym than the one for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?
I have a 16-month-old, and if (God forbid) he turns out to be a geek, I'll have to deal with the same issue.
I grew up in a small town, and my father's shed had all the tools and space I needed. I remember ordering a 50 lb bag of potassium nitrate over the phone from a farm supply outfit, and when they asked "What do you need this for?", I joked with them "You don't want to know." I was grinding model rocket fuel in my bedroom.
The big difference today is the Internet. Nobody was around to teach me the fundamentals back then, and nobody shared my interests. I'd like to think that with an Internet connection, I would have spent less time fumbling around alone in the dark. My son may not get all the space or tools or explosives, but he'll definitely get answers to his questions.
How can you write an article about bad keyboards without describing how they feel? Only the Mattel Aquarius was described as gummy, abysmal and bouncy...
Sounds to me like the author never actually typed on most of them. It's easy to download a bunch of pics from some PC museum site and speculate about how bad their key layout, etc. was.
I remember the C64 as the most beautiful feeling keyboard of all time. The keys had a great molded shape and quiet, luxurious, damped action. Two inches tall? You're not supposed to type with your wrist on the table, man.
My TRS-80 Colour Computers (II and III) had cheap noisy keys with toy-like spring action. I can confirm the Timex Sinclair had not only an impractical layout, but the worst feel of anything I've ever used. Typing was so difficult that you could enter keywords with just one press ("GOTO"!). Somehow that didn't make it any better.
Are you suggesting that the CS curriculum should be designed around solving your little practical problems?
I'm a Mechanical Engineer as well. Are you suggesting that _we_ should have spent our degrees studying look-up charts for HVAC ducts, or how to make nice Excel graphs? (calculus, mechanics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, ring any bells?)