3 ms·

I'm on a tangent but as a Third World millennial, this what I envy most about First World millenials, a previous generation of cool people who invented and got

by noobie 11y ago

I'm on a tangent but as a Third World millennial, this what I envy most about First World millenials, a previous generation of cool people who invented and got to play around with all this cool tech. Everyone I know didn't have parents that got them into programming or messing with hardware. Most of my country's "Gen X" were teachers and technicians at best.

MattGrommes 11y ago
My parents were a construction worker and a secretary and I didn't know anybody who owned a computer until I was probably 13. Still, once I learned that programming was a thing I could do, almost nothing could have stopped me from doing it. It could be that the people who getting into cool tech now because they're wired that way are going to be the ones others look up to later.
pekk 11y ago
If you aren't in the cool second generation, that just means you are in the even cooler first generation. Actually, that applies to a lot of "first world" people too. We aren't all multigenerational tech dynasties over here. Most of the people who were doing anything genuinely pioneering with computers are retired or dead now. Nowadays it's somehow a big deal to write a Javascript framework or some app which made money.
morgante 11y ago
The vast majority of technical people in the US also had no family connections to technology. There are whole memes about the annoyingness of constantly being called on to fix your family computers.
draw_down 11y ago
I sort of know what you mean, nobody around me growing up thought computers or programming were cool or even useful. My parents were just straight up worried about how much I liked computers until I got out of school and got jobs. And this was America in the late 90s, post Microsoft success.
jeremy_k 11y ago
I'll just add my two cents here. My parents are Baby Boomers and neither kept up on technology (they're both finally comfortable using cell phones and texting, not quite to apps yet however). I loved playing video games growing up and my father is an avid outdoor type (loves plants, gardening, etc) was always harping on me to go outside and do stuff, rather than sitting gaming (and I did go outside and ride bikes, play basketball, or sorts of stuff. I think he just always managed to catch me when I was gaming haha). But all that gaming led to my interest in computers, and building/upgrading my PC because it was slow and I lagged like mad in MMORPGs, which eventually led to my choosing to study Computer Science in college. I'm sure there are actually a lot more people like me who picked up programming later in life (I didn't write my first line of code until I was 19!) than those whose parents got them started young.
dasil003 11y ago
I war born in 1978, so I'm not quite a millenial, but I don't particularly identify with gen X either (especially because most of them were already over 30 by the time I graduated high school!). I also am Brazilian-American, so I grew up in both the First World _and_ Third World. In a sense I guess I straddle in both dimensions you cite. While the availability of technology in the US was a huge advantage, it's not like I was surrounded by tech pioneers. Remember, the tech world was much smaller in the 80s, the PC revolution was still very much a hobbyist/office thing until the web went mainstream in the 90s. I feel like I was drawn to computers out of the meager availability to me and nothing was going to keep me away from them. It was not really supported by my parents, and getting information was incredibly difficult. Eventually once my friend got a modem and we were able to get into the BBS scene and find some user groups then things loosened up a bit and the knowledge started to come (but still 100 times harder than it is today with the technical information available online). I feel like those user groups were like oases of tiny groups of computer enthusiasts among tens of thousands of "normals" who might suffer a computer at work, but had absolutely no interest in knowing anything about it. I suspect the ratio of passionate computer geeks is similar, except now computers are so powerful and useful that people are drawn into the industry for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with genuine curiosity/obsession with how they work.

by noobie 11y ago

MattGrommes 11y ago

My parents were a construction worker and a secretary and I didn't know anybody who owned a computer until I was probably 13. Still, once I learned that programming was a thing I could do, almost nothing could have stopped me from doing it. It could be that the people who getting into cool tech now because they're wired that way are going to be the ones others look up to later.

pekk 11y ago

If you aren't in the cool second generation, that just means you are in the even cooler first generation. Actually, that applies to a lot of "first world" people too. We aren't all multigenerational tech dynasties over here. Most of the people who were doing anything genuinely pioneering with computers are retired or dead now. Nowadays it's somehow a big deal to write a Javascript framework or some app which made money.

morgante 11y ago

The vast majority of technical people in the US also had no family connections to technology. There are whole memes about the annoyingness of constantly being called on to fix your family computers.

draw_down 11y ago

I sort of know what you mean, nobody around me growing up thought computers or programming were cool or even useful. My parents were just straight up worried about how much I liked computers until I got out of school and got jobs. And this was America in the late 90s, post Microsoft success.

jeremy_k 11y ago

I'll just add my two cents here. My parents are Baby Boomers and neither kept up on technology (they're both finally comfortable using cell phones and texting, not quite to apps yet however). I loved playing video games growing up and my father is an avid outdoor type (loves plants, gardening, etc) was always harping on me to go outside and do stuff, rather than sitting gaming (and I did go outside and ride bikes, play basketball, or sorts of stuff. I think he just always managed to catch me when I was gaming haha). But all that gaming led to my interest in computers, and building/upgrading my PC because it was slow and I lagged like mad in MMORPGs, which eventually led to my choosing to study Computer Science in college. I'm sure there are actually a lot more people like me who picked up programming later in life (I didn't write my first line of code until I was 19!) than those whose parents got them started young.

dasil003 11y ago

I war born in 1978, so I'm not quite a millenial, but I don't particularly identify with gen X either (especially because most of them were already over 30 by the time I graduated high school!). I also am Brazilian-American, so I grew up in both the First World _and_ Third World. In a sense I guess I straddle in both dimensions you cite. While the availability of technology in the US was a huge advantage, it's not like I was surrounded by tech pioneers. Remember, the tech world was much smaller in the 80s, the PC revolution was still very much a hobbyist/office thing until the web went mainstream in the 90s. I feel like I was drawn to computers out of the meager availability to me and nothing was going to keep me away from them. It was not really supported by my parents, and getting information was incredibly difficult. Eventually once my friend got a modem and we were able to get into the BBS scene and find some user groups then things loosened up a bit and the knowledge started to come (but still 100 times harder than it is today with the technical information available online). I feel like those user groups were like oases of tiny groups of computer enthusiasts among tens of thousands of "normals" who might suffer a computer at work, but had absolutely no interest in knowing anything about it. I suspect the ratio of passionate computer geeks is similar, except now computers are so powerful and useful that people are drawn into the industry for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with genuine curiosity/obsession with how they work.