Ask Lemmy

No.

Simple answer : no

Windows? Fuck no, we had Sun Sparcs and we lik

Segmentation fault.

.... you kids need to get off my lawn *shakes fist*

We had Apple IIs and later some early macs because my area experienced a population boom and had some more tax money to play with.

Sweet summer child. We learned FORTRAN on punch cards that we would send off to the regional office for them to run. Our punch cards would get returned to us with a fanfold printout of errors/output. I'm not sure I ever saw a program work correctly. Mostly because the bad kids would slip fucked up cards into other people's programs, and comment cards remarking on the teacher and her physical unattractiveness. It was a major relief when they put in a micro-lab stocked with these.

I mostly miss that our society seemed stable at the time. I was wrong; for minorities it was still a shit show, but I didn't know that yet.

Gaming got way better after around 2007, and Turtle Rock invented co-op multiplayer that wasn't deathmatch.

Not much, but I do miss the fact that school computers were linux and we used free software to learn basic computer stuff. Nowadays the our school system is held ar gunpoint by google&co

Yes I do. I was too poor to have my own "modern" computer. Yet I was way ahead of anyone else in the class. So they would just let me fuck off and do whatever I wanted to avoid disruptions.

Not much, but I miss the years back then.

Hell yeah. I was young with only young people concerns. That room was always a comfortable temperature. The assignments were meant to last a few minutes and I would have them done in under a minute, giving me plenty of time to do whatever I wanted.

I don't miss windows, but I do miss sitting in the same era computer labs with either the university's own flavor of red hat, or SPARCstations.

The internet was a lot more fun 30 years ago. I guess partly because it felt like magic, and after a degree and some decades in the industry the illusion is gone.

Also, it used to be about sharing pictures of your cat or listing your favourite books. Now everyone is trying to either sell you something or source everything about you to be able to sell you something with more accuracy.

Is this referring to computer labs in schools in general? This is at least Win 95 (and the school system didn't bother to update things in 98), so I would have been in high school with these, and thinking back we had very similar machines. I do kind of miss it because my friends and I had setup a hidden series of IRC servers on a few PCs. So, while we were supposed to be learning to type, we'd just chat. In retrospect, it was a good idea that was poorly implemented (people will eventually get around anything that they have physical access to) but the modern idea of kids in schools just having a ChromeBook, tablet, phone, or w/e is kind of fucked up. We had access to the computer lab for 1 period a day vs. the modern 24/7.

I think that in the end my real opinion is that I don't miss this, I miss my friends and I testing the limits of the security for both network and individual PC. We did some wild stuff with our TI-83s. One of my friends from that time was a certified Machine God and wrote an assembly program for his TI that would allow him (and by extension us) to surreptitiously plug in our calculators to those PCs via serial and effectively "dial out" bypassing the restrictions. It was a wild time.

I remember middle school computer class, using Mavis Beacon to learn to type. We had a list of game sites on the board that we were encouraged to check out if we finished our work early. Since we had to be quiet, my friends and I would go on Neopets and message each other from across the room.

I also remember, after having completed the class, the school deciding to update their security and they banned all the sites that were on that board. Such a stupid decision, it's not like kids were on the computers at all unless they had their teachers' permission. There's no way it was interfering with anyone's class time.

I have no idea what subsequent computer classes were to do in their downtime, but I imagine it became a lot harder to keep a class of 12 year olds sitting quietly.

It's the only room with air conditioning that we can be in during class time

In my nearest CCollege in the mid 2000s, they w were still using FLOPPY DISCS and old macs for computer labs. its only until few years later we finally got funding for upgrades, i think the 08 crash really screwed things up.

Not really. I still take the time to have in person LAN parties with friends and crack out a CRT or two for old skool Mario Kart on the N64.

You can't miss what you never let go of

All but the CRTs. Too harsh. No dark themes.

Windows 95 was fun back then. Mostly because the security in those networks was, let say, non-existing. You had full access to every computers drives. And if you'd find the image that was used as the desktop background and changed it, windows would refresh the image automatically. Ofcourse we were very creative with the messages we left. And smart enough to keep the original to put back when our victim tried to get the teacher involved. We could have errased the document on the diskettes too, but we weren't that horrible.

I'm not sure. The novelty was awesome, but we do so much more now with a lot less waiting.

In some ways yes very much in others no not at all. I wouldn’t go back if I could, I’ve been through too much shit I wouldn’t be willing to do twice

Yeah I remember going to the "computer lab" and doing school work searching askjeves for answers.

I remember this extremely well, because I am indeed old enough to remember these things!

School computer lab memories:

School #1: c. 1989-1991 - Apple IIGSes with ImageWriter printers and a shared 5.25" disk box that the instructor could use to load software onto multiple machines.

The school also had a bunch of Commodore 64s that had recently been replaced by the IIGS machines. There were also a few Apple IIc machines (thought they were neat at the time, and still do!)

My sixth grade teacher was an amateur coder and taught me a bit of Pascal.

School #2:

c.1991-1993 - Apple IIe machines. Had a first experience using a Mac SE and a Mac Classic, which I thought was amazing.

School #3:

c. 1994-1997

Mac Classics in a line in the library, A lab filled with Macintosh LC3s, and another lab with PCs running earlyish versions of Windows and DOS, networked with Netware IPX. I was old enough at this point to be a student network admin.

The school also had some lingering Mac SE/30s, and a store room filled with TRS-80s, which I unsuccessfully tried to get my computer teacher to give me. However, the librarian gave me an original IBM 8086 and a monitor, so I took it home and learnt assembly.

Love the overhead projector in the corner of the lab shown. They were ubiquitous!

during my k12, we went from PET to apple II and gs (apple was wizards at selling their junk to schools), and finally getting out from under apple and adding a few 386s at the end.

Nope.

Rose colored glasses.

Except from the school aspect, yes, a little. While 33.6 baud was a PITA, websites were built to accommodate it. And I made a lot of extra cash sailing the high seas.

So nostalgic