08-02-2020, 10:26 AM
While we take personal computers and cellphones for granted today, they were just hitting the consumer market when Generation X were in their teens and 20s. Both already existed, of course, but previously they were large, expensive devices that very few could afford. Most mobile phones were still anchored to a base unit in the car by a phone cord. The first truly portable ones were as thick as a brick and twice as heavy.
Most of us still used land lines to make phone calls. When cellphones arrived in our late 20s to early 30s, we mostly used them to make phone calls too. I think the popularity of texting came about due to increasing familiarity with Internet chat towards the turn of the century.
(When I was a kid, only extremely old people reminisced about "the turn of the century.")
Generation X were the first to learn to code on our own. This was usually accomplished by painstakingly typing BASIC programs from printed books and magazines into our computers. I would later learn JavaScript more or less the same way, initially copying and pasting other people's scripts from the Internet into my own HTML pages.
Most of us still used land lines to make phone calls. When cellphones arrived in our late 20s to early 30s, we mostly used them to make phone calls too. I think the popularity of texting came about due to increasing familiarity with Internet chat towards the turn of the century.
(When I was a kid, only extremely old people reminisced about "the turn of the century.")
Generation X were the first to learn to code on our own. This was usually accomplished by painstakingly typing BASIC programs from printed books and magazines into our computers. I would later learn JavaScript more or less the same way, initially copying and pasting other people's scripts from the Internet into my own HTML pages.
