There’s often a skill that seem interesting, but I can’t see doing anything for me in my day-to-day life. What have you learned that was a lot more effort than the payoff was worth?

  • hawgietonight@lemmy.world
    7·
    7 days ago

    As an old time computer nerd I have uncountable examples of deprecated knowledge. There is no use in knowing how to use the reserved upper memory in autoexec.bat and config.sys, nor how to use Napster or Kazaa.

    But all these skills do shape your brain and way of thinking.

    Assembly language taught me to be precise and think before typing. Flash taught me that nothing lasts forever, as big as it might seem.

    Eventually, all this adds up and creates a profile that is very demanded in my career.

    That said, my mom taught me to thread a needle without looking. And I can’t sew, so that’s that.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 days ago

      While knowledge like that is deprecated, the foundational skills and problem-solving it gave you are still very valuable. Modern systems are still built upon old roads, so people with this base level of knowledge have a far easier time sorting out what fixes are needed. Like being an old mechanic that diagnoses a car issue almost immediately because they can hear the issue without hooking up a digital diagnostic, they already know what to look for.

      I miss older computers, lol. 2000-2010-ish was the golden era.

      • hawgietonight@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 days ago

        It’s pretty cool to see once mastered because it takes less than a second and not many catch what happened.

        You take the thread and wrap it around the needle and pull tight. Grab the thread with two fingers and pinch it. Slide the needle out and shove the needle’s eye into the pinched thread. When the thread goes through, grab it and pull it all the way.

        The skill comes into play aiming the eye correctly and doing it fast.

        It’s probably easier to understand watching a tutorial video.