Comments by "Christian Baune" (@programaths) on "Reflections on losing: 15 years in professional repair" video.

  1. I started fixed a gamin console while taking a dump, only went to my desk for the soldering 😂 Most of my friends wouldn't even be at ease at a station that is clean and orderly ^^ And if the space is too confined, they wouldn't be able to handle the iron. They would probably kill ICs by heating them too much and they wouldn't even have a fair idea how to check empiricly. They would jolt fhemselves if there is a battery, because they wouldn't even think to disconnect it and wait. They wouldn't even know where they can create a short to drain the circuit. If a discreet component comes in a different packaging, they would be puzzled. That's all those things that has to be overcome. In some parts, it's like cooking ^^ You've to do it. It's how you learn. And when you open a device without schematics/docs, you've to be observant. Even if some PCBs have markings that greatly help. In the chinese console I fixed, it was a blank plate, but some german devices have the name of each component and the outline. This should be mandatory in school to do a few circuits. Not even learning ohm laws. Just looking at it from far away, swapping parts. We have kids playing with arduino and they do great things. They don't know about the formula. But they know how to read schematics, reproduce a board. And when they get used to it, they try stuff ^^ Those kids will certainly not fear to open any device to have a look, know how to look for broken components and swap them. Months ago, we had to change a car battery. It's simple, you just unscrew it, swap and screw the new one. Everyone was frightened, because they didn't knew the basic about electricity. And everyone did already got a good jolt from a bad transformer ^^ So, I had to show it was OK to touch the battery with a metal tool. That was OK to grab the wires etc. What was not ok is closing the circuit. I ended up doing it myself, the fear was too strong for them ^^ Hooking the battery to a charger was too much. They already used chargers for small batteries, never was frightening to them. But the fact it was a car battery, that the charger is big, with big wires, that was enough to scare them. Sounds stupid, but that's how people who are not in ease with electricity behave. I have a friend who is afraidnof manipulating an iron. Because it's very hot and he doesn't has sturdy hands. He can do what I do, yet he can't. There are even people afraid to build computers ^^ I remember, when we had to do automatons (S300), the teacher told us to out a processor, memory bank, some input and output. I read the manual which explained how the clip worked and in 5 minutes, I had a setup being mirrored on the computer. I had student asking me how to put the modules and how I knew where they did go. I didn't, because there was no such things. You just put the modules where they can fit and the automaton will configure itself. It's magic. As for connecting to the PC, not many choices. So, you can't go wrong. I think it was a full lesson just for that, because people had to be "broken". It was seen as hard, because all projects were done using official manuals from Siemens. Mostly overcoming your fears. And the we had DAC. Where you've to come with your own PCBs. Much harder of course, but most students were at ease, so it looked easier. A lot of it is getting used to. I do programming and I am good (top percentile) in Java, Kotlin, XQuery, XSLT, SQL, JavaScript, .Net (even have champion title for that one) and PHP. I picked up PureBasic and created a graphic editor as a toy project... People think it's fake, then see I know those and wonder how. Simple: I try stuff ^^ And because I practiced that a lot, learning new technologies is much simpler! There is no way around some sort of practice. No way around.
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