I just feel bad for all the kids who won't feel the joy of talking into a fan and making a funny voice :(

too many things have been lost or gimped.

Chemistry sets, m-80s, model rockets, playgrounds, coaster brakes, whatever kids did before "play dates" and anything intricate with small parts.

There were probably too many things lost from "our" (n-1th generation) childhood too. Things like marveling at the first TVs, playing with unspent WW2 ammunition, etc. I'm sure each generation has its own things that they miss and think are detrimental to have lost, however I'm not sure that overall it's worse for the current generation. Hard to say. Growing up, I certainly would have loved having near infinite amounts of programming help available for free, instead of trying to decipher something from a 50-times photocopied manual. I guess some things get better, some worse, change is the only constant.

>Growing up, I certainly would have loved having near infinite amounts of programming help available for free, instead of trying to decipher something from a 50-times photocopied manual.

Would you be as good of a programmer today if that was true? I remember spending an entire week trying to figure out how strings worked in QBASIC, when I was in 5th grade. There was no internet and I only had the Apple IIGS Basic manual to work with. I tried and tried and tried and eventually figured out that it had something to do with those $ symbols. Eventually I got the hang of it. I guess the point is, that challenge and struggle with simple things helped me develop the attitude to overcome truly difficult things later. Maybe this is more just memories of childhood than anything..

Fair point. Though who knows, it's hard/impossible to say. For some individuals, it might have been positive, for others, perhaps negative. Overall however, I would not say that today's programmers are of worse quality, on average. (It's hard to compare however, as clearly we have a 10/20/30 year experience gap over them.)

It ebbs and flows. There was a low point in the late nineties and early 2000's:

* Windows 95 removed all thought of the user as a programmer, killing things like QBasic.

* Apple was doing likewise, even killing Hypercard.

* The web wasn't in its prime yet, limited to HTML 2.0 and 3.2, and really lousy JavaScript.

* Even electronics was tough, since DIP parts were being replaced with SMT, and the service manual was starting to become a relic, but things like Arduino and RPi didn't exist yet, and making PCBs was $$$$$.

* Shop classes were on the decline in schools, but makerspaces weren't in yet.

I feel bad for kids growing up then. Short of installing a Linux distribution, kids were left out in the cold for being anything other than consumers of technology.

There was really a golden age in the eighties and early nineties, and we seem to be in another golden age right now.

Familiar with all in your list, plus I'd like to add a few:

Lawn darts, BB guns, wrist rockets, bottle rockets (I know you said M-80s, I had those too, but bottle rockets could be shot at friends), can of WD-40 (with requisite red straw) plus a lighter, backyard archery set.

Love you Mom and Dad! 70s were great!

Side note: "nerfed" is preferable to "gimped".

One uses the name of a toy in a derogatory manner, the other is a straight-up derogatory term for a group of people.

I've only heard it in the software sense of intentionally restricted, but you're right - nerfed is better.

I guess you haven't had chance to join a conference call (Zoom, BlueJeans, Hangouts ...) where someone has a fan running in their relative vicinity?

At first I also didn't know why is one of colleagues sounding "weird" - never would've thought they had their fan running, until one product manager asked "Hey X, do you have a fan running nearby?"

Instead, they get apps that can change their voice and face in thousands of ways.

I mean I get the "born in the wrong generation" vibe, but at the same time it's easy to get blinkered and not realize what came instead. In a LOT of ways, they (and we) were born in the RIGHT generation.

Part of the fun in the fan is discovering the accidental feature. You play with it and transform what it can do, unconstrained (except by natural laws).

With an app, you’re using a tool for its intended purpose. There’s little joy in discoverability because you’re following the rules the developer set.

That’s why the fan can be more fun; it’s not generational. The fun is in exploring a novel feature in something you though you thoroughly understood.

When the novelty is over with the app, you delete it (was the hour of fun worth getting your data mined?) and return to the boredom (find the next app). With the fan, you simply stop and it continues to be useful. Without you taking deliberate action, everything returns to the way it was. Except for your mind, which metaphorically expanded and wants to see what else can be used in creative ways.

I sure did it more than ten times, but quickly learned to be careful and insert the finger slowly into the moving fan.

I'm afraid you missed the joke here =)

I can't tell if they missed the joke about losing 10 fingers and having to stop there, or if you missed their joke that you can insert the same finger multiple times as long as you only lose a bit of a finger each time.

All the above forgot toes

Those are not fingers (at least not in English).

This chain has got me wondering how we count in base 10, but we don't have 10 fingers instead 8 fingers and 2 thumbs. Maybe we have 10 digits, but digits can be fingers or toes so we really have 20 digits.

Is there a word in English which exclusively means hand-digits or fingers+thumbs or digits-toes?

Because people don't usually don't on their toes? It's easier to bring your hands into view than your feet.

In German we have "hand shoes" for gloves :)

You just broke my mind Russian mind.

in spanish aren't fingers and toes interchangeable?

they're actually interchangeable anywhere as long as you have a talented surgeon.

If you are really committed, you should be able to go up to at least 20 :)

In some extreme cases they can go up to ~20. But after 25, it becomes really a corner case.

Assuming now tongues, toes, or ears.