alt Hacker NewsI feel like if you had wanted to you could have done it before. When I got a pool in 2020,there were still old school phpBB forums out there dedicated to DIY and maintenance. That same summer, my neighbour who in no way is techie or handy redid his plumbing too.
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This was my take as well. I just don't buy that ChatGPT was some critical prerequisite to doing a pretty standard DIY task.
I think insecurity, over-estimating difficulty / effort, and risk aversion are all to blame. I think these things would improve a lot if people have DIY tasks as part of their upbringing or education, if only to get experience with it.
But the education system - at least for me, 20ish years ago - was very much tiered or broken up into classism: if you were highly intelligent or a good learner you'd go to advanced schools where you'd get higher level math, latin, etc. If you were "dumb" you'd get taught how to do woodworking and masonry. At best I was taught how to use a figure saw, drill press safety measures, and how to patch an inner tube (welcome to the Netherlands, this is very important. Or, was, it's much simpler and cheaper to just buy a new inner tube nowadays).
Yeah, absolutely. The YouTube guides have all been very helpful, a lot of them are done by actual paid professionals promoting their pool brand.
The fellow who'd done it originally is my neighbor and he's a retired teacher. There's a lot of ways to learn this stuff - my one takeaway has been that it's much easier than people make it out to be.