[probably_wrong]

> There is nothing intrinsic to computing nowadays that makes it less magic than fiddling around with config.sys

There definitely is: the rent-seeking behavior is out of control. As a kid I could fiddle with config.sys (or rather autoexec.bat) while nowadays wrestling a file path out of my phone is a battle and the system files of my phone are kept from me.

[Kon5ole]

>As a kid I could fiddle with config.sys (or rather autoexec.bat) while nowadays wrestling a file path out of my phone is a battle and the system files of my phone are kept from me.

I think the magic happens at different levels of abstraction as time goes by, and it's easy to get stuck.

Us kids could fiddle with autoexec and config to get DOOM going, today's kids can fiddle with a yaml and have a MMORPG that handles 10 000 users from all over the world going.

It's not the same but I can easily imagine it feeling at least equally magical for a kid today.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Why do you allow a mobile handheld computing and communication device to define "computing" ? I understand that they are important devices and lots of people with a hacker mentality would like to be able to hack them the way old folks once hacked DOS. But the current computing environment is much, much wider than iOS/Android, and if you're going to complain about just one aspect of it, I think it would be better to acknowledge that.

In many ways, things like RPi and Arduino have actually massively expanded the realm of totally hackable computing beyond what was even possible for early personal computer users.

[ibejoeb]

As others have said, it's not so much that tinkering opportunities don't exist. It's more there's a slump in the market of doing relatively easy jobs for money. You can hack on esp32 all day, but there aren't many ways to make money doing so. Making software for the iPhone was (and is still, at this point) a pretty good gig.

I figure auto mechanics contended with this 25 years ago. Now it's hard to find someone to replace your water pump, if your vehicle even has one. Like auto mechanics, though, these machines still exist and there's still a big market for those skills. It might just require more legwork to find that work.

[direwolf20]

For the same reason computing used to be defined by a Commodore 64 more than by an IBM System/370-XA mainframe from the same year — they're the most commonly and most easily accessible computing devices.

Old farts like us think the desktop is the default kind of computer, but it isn't. Most computers are phones, followed by tablets and laptops with touchscreens, and desktops are the weirdest ones.