> Do you feel this strongly about being able to replace the engine in your car with one you made yourself?

I am not one of those people, as I do not do cars, but I would hazard a guess that most men over a certain age do in fact feel very strongly about what modern cars have become. The ones who grew up without knowing what ownership feels like less so, which reflects the exact same dynamic with younger generations who are growing up without ever knowing what it feels like to own the hardware they use.

[delayed]

I think it would be disingenuous not to point out that this was also true of new cars 20 years ago - which is much more pertinent to the point of the people you're replying to.

I am looking forward to swapping the engine in my MX5, if I ever manage to kill it.

Considering how easy it was to replace engines of most cars before the integration of electronics I'd say it used to be quite common. Just as most hardware vendors used to ship full specs for their components up until the 80s or even 90s.

So, yeah, yes, definitely. I wouldn't be working with computers on a daily basis if I had to use Windows.

I'm not gonna overly generalize this though. I don't think it'll be the same for most people but I tend to not care about what most people do 99% of the time anyways.

If it was as cheap and easy to install a new engine as it is for an OS, I imagine swapping engines would be even more popular than new OSs.

If it was easy, someone would’ve done something. with Darwin or many the other abandon/obsolete OS’s from the past…