Used a soldering iron for the first time in my life and fixed a crappy plastic toy by resoldering the battery to the contacts on the PCB. Right now I feel like a cross between Alan Turing and Isembard Kingdom Brunel. 💪🤓
@ottocrat I'm from roughly the first generation of software engineers who didn't get an Electrical Engineering degree, which was once the only relevant discipline the universities knew about. So occasionally I'll find myself in the lab trying to solder together some a cable end or something in order to get some vintage hardware working as a reference, and a slightly older bloke will watch me for a moment in growing dismay and finally say "for god's sake didn't anyone teach you how to solder?", gently move me aside and with a deftness I could never hope to emulate produce this seamless thing in seconds...
@ottocrat But then I'm used to being on the wrong side of some cusp or hiatus. My brother is two years older than me and was taught to use a slide rule in the same classes I wasn't.
@pieist Meanwhile I was knee-deep in Thucydides… 😅 My dad did a lot of his own electronics so I saw him soldering often as a kid, but this was a line I had not crossed myself until today. My “slightly older bloke” was Youtube.