I'm not that old and I feel pretty lucky that I caught the tail end of having to learn to do things myself.

It was a painful experience having to do square root calculations on paper (in pen - stupid teacher), but I guess it is pretty comforting that I do not have to use a calculator to figure out the tip at Chili's after lunch. I have worked with a few people that actually have to break out their cell phones to do this complex mathematical operation.

I spent a lot of time working on cars when I was a kid. My first car arrived on a flatbed and my father, my brother, and I had to restore it end-to-end before I could drive it. Not only did it give me an appreciation of the work it takes to own a car, but it taught me some of the most important fundamental troubleshooting skills that I use every day. I think people lack some of the "break it into pieces and figure it out" skills.

But, I guess that is part of the trappings of technology. To really use it to it's fullest potential, someone needs to learn how to best use and build on what we have. If they spent all of their time figuring out how and why all of it works, they would not have the time to actually make use of it. I just hope we keep in mind that we still need both.

I wonder if CS majors still have to build a motherboard with a soldering iron...