Comment by kelnos
1 day ago
> noodling around on a computer that cost $2500 (more like $5500 in today's dollars)
Wow! 12-year-old me was noodling around on a computer that my dad brought home from work because it would have otherwise ended up in landfill. We had very little money for computers back then, and I was thrilled when my parents gave me a budget to buy parts to build my own from scratch when I was about to go off to college (I'd saved up a bit myself, but not nearly enough).
I think your experience is pretty privileged, and not at all common.
There's always more to the story than the Internet assumes.
We were quite possibly less privileged than you were, if your dad brought a computer home from work. I grew up with a teacher and a househusband for parents; single-income, and that income made about 1/3 of what engineers or other computer professionals made. My kid had more passport stamps at age 2 than I did at age 18.
It was $2500 because it was a Mac LC, and it was a Mac LC because that could take an Apple 2E card and run both Mac and Apple software, and that was important because my mom was a teacher and had a large library of educational software at school that she could take home. Recall that in those days, software was sold in retail stores (no Internet), and cost $50-100 for kiddie stuff, and like $400 for productivity and compilers. 25 titles and the cost of the computer paid for itself in free software. I think we used about that.
It's a matter of priorities. My parents always prioritized my education: they bought a computer, and whatever software didn't come from my mom's workplace, and any books I wanted, and paid for my college education in full. We didn't have a whole lot other than that: we didn't take a lot of vacations or plane trips (and a single plane trip would cost more than that $2500 in those days), ran our cars into the ground (my mom owned 2 cars over my entire childhood), wore hand-me-downs.
Everyone has some level of privilege. I didn't get my first PC until I was a freshman in college. I had to spend part of my college loan buying one (~$3k IIRC). Up to that point I had only played with the Apple IIc's and the few Macs they had at my high school..
Information on programming also wasn't as readily available as it is now. I used to go the book stores and use pencil and paper and copy out solutions since $50+ for a book was way more money than I could spend.
Everything today is crazy inexpensive for the value.
So what?
That sounds dismissive, and maybe it is, but I'm being serious here. What is the point of coming here and saying "when I was 12, my parents had less money than yours did when you were 12?" Privilege is relative, "common" is relative, and constantly being dragged into oppression Olympics of who has or had things slightly worse is exhausting and not conducive to conversation.
Better keep in mind that someone here almost certainly had it even worse than you when they were in elementary school, lest you go a few seconds without acknowledging your privileged upbringing, for some reason, in a conversation where it bears absolutely no relation to anything.