Do they? A human can both chuck kilograms of stuff across a room or kick in a door, but then pick up a single hair off the ground, or feel and manipulate (things even lighter than) a literal feather.

Robots can certainly do things more repeatably, if not more precisely.

Though I'll admit, when I used to use cassettes, I never write protected them

I guess my advice is "don't use a really old and worn out battery for this". Otherwise it's probably fine? People walk around all day with one in their pocket and sometimes their ear after all.

In 3D CAD, you click on it. It's completely unambiguous and it also doesn't take 10 seconds to interpret your prompt (because I saw this tool can also read images, but takes time to do so).

Making video game assets on the other hand I could see.

And at 1500 RPM no less.

"Don't sit too close to the television, Timmy, it might cut off your arm."

As best I can tell, the 180 line system was used with CRTs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-line_television_system

I once tried to mill one out of MDF on a CNC machine [1]. It didn't sound very good, but better than I expected.

3D printing one seems very difficult, since 3D printers build walls instead of cut grooves. Maybe you could play it if you had some kind of bifurcated needle? Anyways, it's enough of a joke that it probably wouldn't work well that it was a Prusa April fools joke [2].

A better printer, maybe a resin one, can do it [3].

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzCv_9eaoM

1 - https://hackaday.com/2022/06/17/wooden-you-like-to-hear-a-cn...

2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1egpbrg90

3 - https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/3d-printing-records/

How much shorter would an LP be if you used a fixed pitch?

Any of them are a big step from "computer is just for MS PAINT" to "wow, it actually did something I told it to".

By the time I got to the Z80 stuff I had abandoned basic (though learning C from Arduino is also something people tend not to recommend). Once I learned some Z80 assembly and I encountered BASIC again, I was struck by how similar assembly language and BASIC are, specifically the setting variables and then jumping around all the time part. They taught this stuff to kids!

BASIC is just plain approachable - turn on the computer and it's there. Also I had the paper manuals manuals that came with the computer and all the old BASIC books that my school library never threw away to learn from. When you're young enough that "install software" or "download" look like scary words that will get you in trouble for "messing up the computer", an old computer with BASIC (which your parents wanted to throw away anyways) is fair game to explore. More of a thing when households only had one main computer, I suppose.

By the time I was old enough to start learning hardware, the Arduino had already come out. I learned some things on that, but as soon as you have to go below all the abstractions it does for you things get cryptic. I actually didn't get into Z80 stuff until a few years later, but only after that did I actually feel I understood what was going on with the Arduino. Being able to poke at things with a scope which aren't embedded inside a tiny plastic brick goes a long way.

Part number was still just 15 characters, and that's enough to specify if you want the tape and reel version. Not that anyone's counting :).

I guess those long part numbers do get burned into your head after a while after all.

Espressif only have 312 SKUs [0]. You're telling me nobody could come up with a naming scheme where more than 2/3 of them don't have part numbers longer than 18 characters?

Doesn't really matter either way, but short part numbers do fit nicely in a BOM table without using really wide columns. (even though I usually find capacitors to have even longer names).

0 - https://products.espressif.com/#/product-selector

https://hackaday.com/2018/07/19/whats-inside-a-scientology-e...

I guess if you have tons of cash rolling in, you might as well commit to it.