It was different prior to the mid-90's and the 80's (despite much more primitive tech) were even more fun. Two things happened around the same time: Bill Gates became the worlds richest man (and a household name) and a bunch of college dropouts started becoming overnight multi-millionaires (at least) with the dot com explosion which was well publicized. Prior to that, sure there was good money to be made in some areas of tech[1], but many were driven by interest rather than a career path and most non-tech people just regarded computers as those things they didn't understand. Most business people regarded computers as fancy calculators that did the accounting and it was hella-hard to even get them to learn about spreadsheets. So geeks were pretty much left alone and programming wasn't seen as the mail room job on the path to getting rich it is today.
In that environment, a lot of adults were willing to give technically minded kids at least some amount of their time because the only reason most of us (kids, at the time) were asking questions was because we just wanted to understand how all this stuff worked for fun rather than working on a get rich quick scheme. I also suspect the adults found this enthusiasm more interesting than the general disdain they probably experienced at the office.
[1] As in, put in some time and develop an area of expertise that someone valued... then you could start making money. Most college grads were viewed as fairly useless for their first few years out of school and their salaries reflected that.
Yeah there was this odd change over. I'm not exactly sure when but probably around the dotcom boom.
I remember that if you said you mentioned computers people in general would just parrot that back to you in this "nerd" voice as if it was a joke.
It was rare to even read about what was happening in the world of computers in a mainstream newspaper.
To me, a kid at the time, I felt like I was seeing the gateway to a new kind future unrolling but there was just no way to discuss that with "normal" people at the time.
I guess any adult working in that industry would be keen to share that with anyone interested regardless of age because it was all changing so fast and was so damn exciting.
I don't know - it also went away with the bust. I picked CS as my major shortly after the bust and everyone advised me against it. Between the bust and outsourcing I was told I would be making minimum wage.
You're actually reinforcing my point about the change in the industry. Many of the people who came up in tech prior to the mid-90's didn't care of the industry was in boom or bust mode: they just wanted to work in/with tech. I completely understand those who got into it because they saw it purely through a financial lens, but that's a different subset of people in tech.
In that environment, a lot of adults were willing to give technically minded kids at least some amount of their time because the only reason most of us (kids, at the time) were asking questions was because we just wanted to understand how all this stuff worked for fun rather than working on a get rich quick scheme. I also suspect the adults found this enthusiasm more interesting than the general disdain they probably experienced at the office.
[1] As in, put in some time and develop an area of expertise that someone valued... then you could start making money. Most college grads were viewed as fairly useless for their first few years out of school and their salaries reflected that.