[indemnity]

I grew up in a similar environment, similar trajectory, but in Africa.

Dad was a teacher in a rural school, mum stayed at home.

Until I went to school I would stay outside all day with my friends, playing in and around the rivers and dams, making our own fun with abandoned cars and rusted out farming equipment.

Our school had one computer, and I was lucky enough to get to use it after hours from time to time.

I would study the manual from front to back so I could optimise my time while on the computer.

Practiced typing on a typewriter to type in code listings faster later (aging myself here ;)

Today I build AI agents and infrastructure to run them for a hyperscaler, and my car drives me around. Feels like another lifetime ago.

[ErroneousBosh]

This is rural Scotland in the late 1970s / early 1980s.

I'd like my small son to have the same opportunities that I had, instead of a school where the playground has lots of very carefully manufactured play equipment and they get to sit and look at iPads instead of working out for themselves how to program a BBC Micro.

[indemnity]

This is super hard for me as well.

I know that a part of why I did so well in programming was being forced to think about what to do and how things worked for so long, and it gave me a lot of stamina to brute force my way through problems.

But these days, I'll admit even I reach for an LLM more often than not, and I can feel my mental muscle memory atrophy.

I don't know how to give my son the same experience (currently at age 8, he still does not have any of his own devices, and has highly restricted access to the iPad).

But still...