You can be good at more than one thing in your life. If all you do is program you’ve hamstrung yourself badly. Some people see it and course correct, others become old men, full of regret.

I’ve known of two bike clubs that would refurbish old bikes for kids. Once you learn enough maintenance to trust your own repairs at speeds and distances most people avoid, doing repairs for others isn’t much of a stretch. Fixing calculators or tablets or game boys wouldn’t be a full time job. A lot of social projects are volunteer or nonprofit.

Aside from a lack of empathy this just isn’t true. TV repair shops aren’t the great career they used to be; you can’t make a living on basic soldering skills, a Radio Shack catalog, patience and elbow grease, and a good set of screwdrivers anymore.

Most of the programmers I know would not be able to do that, what I mean is that they should become programmers.

There’s no special skill overlap between programming and repairing consumer electronics with parts from other consumer electronics.

I think the Right to Repair people want a world where that’s at least marginally true.