@neauoire Re: what are computers for, anyway?
It may be the only example I will ever think of, but I find celestial navigation at sea to be a really cool example of computers being used independently to solve an immediate problem. To store star catalogues digitally, to quickly reduce a time sight, to keep time in an accurate manner using a quartz oscillator... It's a nice cocktail of features that are all really important to a celestial navigator! Sure, GPS exists, but it's just not the same...