Two Different Skills
In a recent blog post by Cal Newport, The Lost Satisfactions of Manual Competence, he discusses the satisfaction of the creation of an object under the tutelage of his grandfather. The physical effort to take a hunk of metal and turn it into a functional working engine.
Newport's post resonated with me for a couple of reasons. First, my own father was a tool and die maker and the workshop in my basement was filled with many different tools that were used to create functional objects from raw materials. It was there that I spent countless days "playing" with the various tools, creating something that I had envisioned in my head. With time, my competence for creation of such objects grew to a point where I could be reasonably proficient in creating what I had dreamed (within reason).
I could fix a bicycle. Mend a fence. Create a birdhouse. Make a model car or spaceship. I could solder a broken electrical connection. Repair a broken item. And I could create objects that were within my mind.
I didn't really know much about computers until I was in high school when only the "nerds" were playing with decks of programming cards, and it wasn't until my medical residency when I had my first real experience with the first IBM PC with a green screen and a 5 1/4 floppy disk. It was at that time that my experience as...