Re: A Link of note

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

Rubywand wrote:

>      The point is that, while many of your activities may fit the hobby
> model, your computer remains the enabling tool, not, per se, a hobby. If your
> hobby is painting murals on walnut shells, you would not consider yourself a
> "paint brush hobbyist".
>

LOL - so you think a paint brush is as complex and interesting as a computer?

>
>  ....
> >
> > In my book, a "computer user" is someone who does *not* write his own
> > programs, but only uses software written by others.
>
>      I like the portrayal of "user" in the movie "Tron" better. A "user" is
> someone who uses computers to do stuff, including to write programs. This
> also matches the generally understood meaning of "small computer user" going
> back to the late 1970's.

Oh, now I understand. You get your technical definitions from Walt Disney movies.
I'll bet you think that fawns born in the spring still have their spots the
following winter and talk to their mothers too.

>
>
>  ....
>
> > > There is a natural tendency to lump the years 1975-1977 together and
> > > think of them as the Byte-Altair-SWTP- ... pre-Apple II
> > > times when everyone was fiddling with S-100 boards.
> > > However, it just is not the case. By 1977, bunches of
> > > complete small computer systems (OSI, TRS-80, ...) running
> > > high-level languages, including BASIC, were being sold, many with disk
> > > drives.
> >
> > Yes, but these computers had almost no end-user software.
>  ....
>
>      Not so. By 1977 there was quite a lot, more for some brands and models
> than others.
>

If, by "quite a lot" you mean 10 or 20 packages, usually written in BASIC, and
sold in ziplock bags.

>
> > The owners of these computers had to write their own software:
>
>      Depends upon what a user wanted to do. There were paint utilities,

Paint utilities? On a CBM Pet? Or a TRS-80 model one? Yet, right. Those machines
only had a low res black and white display. And few CP/M machines had any
graphics. Yes, I know about the Dazzler card. But it wasn't that common, and it
was an S-100 card only.

>
> financial packages, chess programs, adventure games, arcade games, disk
> management utilities, ... .

VisiCalc hadn't even been written yet, and most of the above, again, were written
in BASIC; slow, limited, and nearly worthless for really running a business on.
This isn't 1980 we are discussing, but 1976-77. The Apple ][ wasn't even out
until 1977.

>
>
>      A user might need to write a program for some special application or to
> handle some task better than existing software did. But, then, this was true
> five years later and is still true today.
>
> > that makes them developers, not users.
>
>      It makes them users who develop some piece of software. The term
> "developer" usually applies to someone who creates a lot of software which is
> distributed and used by others.
>
> > If they did it for free, at their spare time, then it was a hobby.
>
>      Model railroading is a hobby. Writing a program is programming.

Ok, you know what's obvious here? You have dug your feet in, and no reasonable
statement will change your mind. Model railroading is a hobby. But which part?
The painting? Creation of sets? Buying/building of cars? Or running the trains?
By your definition, MR isn't a hobby - running trains is entertainment. Painting
isn't MR, it's painting, making sets/layouts isn't MR, it's set making, and so
on. So MR doesn't exist. And neither does computing. One doesn't compute, one
runs a game, or a word processing program, or a language, etc. And no one does
those things as hobbys, or if they do, they aren't computer hobbyists.

Roy