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It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" - whatever that means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom need

It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" - whatever that means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom need to tinker with or troubleshoot computers. Just spitballing here, but I'd expect peak tech-savviness to have occurred in the 80s and early 90s. If you were old enough to want to play resource intensive games released in the run-up to Win95, you'd sometimes need to free up memory by messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat. Good times...

drchiu 8y ago
Your comment about config.sys and autoexec.bat brought a smile to me. Definitely good old times. Also miss messing around hexadecimal editors to cheat in games.
alephnil 8y ago
In fact, it is much harder to tinker with technology than it used to be. Not only is it more complex, but phones are also locked down so you are not really able to control your own device, or it does at least require quite some effort to do so, and can't be done using the device itself. Both Apple and Google in practice discourage people from tinkering with the device.
- c22 8y ago
  It might be harder to tinker with The Device, but tinkering kids these days are not bereft of options. When I was a teenager I remember badly wanting a "386 single board computer" which I saw advertised in the pages of Popular Science for hundreds of dollars. Imagine the things I could do with a whole computer small enough to hold in one hand! It could breathe new life into my projects and bring my tinkering to a whole new level! Sadly this marvel was beyond my budget at the time but today you can buy dozens of such boards for a fraction of the price. Boards with a dizzying array of integrated peripherals teenage me wouldn't have even known what to do with. Today there are uncountable open source projects you can download immediately to run on these boards, whole sophisticated stacks which can be imported now and torn apart to be stitched back together tomorrow. A tech-interested teen today can buy devices with their pocket change that have more power and flexibility than any of the platforms I had access to as a kid.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    It may be worth observing that the window when teenagers and younger were messing around with config.sys files and routinely building DOS computers from parts was actually pretty narrow. I'm a bit older and didn't touch a computer keyboard (actually a teletype) until late in high school and didn't even do much with computers in college. (I'm an engineer by training but not CS.) I was working when I got into PCs, initially as a way to do some engineering calculations and project tracking on my job. I agree that although consumption is the norm, the options and information available for those who want to go under the hood is pretty amazing today.
- colmvp 8y ago
  Maybe. I remember having a hard time searching for information when I was young, as it was pre-internet and I was reliant on my parents on driving me places like the library to access information. Nowadays, if you want to learn the ins and outs of something, you can order books online or watch informative video tutorials made by people who have been in the tech field for a significant amount of time.
  - kyriakos 8y ago
    I think the lack of availability of information made us more creative. I was trying to build a side scroller game when I was a kid in Turbo Pascal, there was no Internet and nowhere I could find out how to do it. Even though I never managed it in the end I spent countless hours trying and coming up with my own solutions to problems. I wouldn't have been the developer I am today if someone just gave me Unity and YouTube to copy parts from tutorials without allowing me to understand how things work at the lower level.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  It's only harder if you make it harder and don't put any thought into it. Desktop computers still exist, and you can still order the parts to make your own. You can even buy cool glass cases where the parts are exposed and all light up. Raspberry pi are essentially free, and can be used for all kinds of interesting stuff. Do that. See also Razer synapse, the El gato streamdeck, programmable keyboards, all of which still exist. Phones are not the only computers.
  - Nullabillity 8y ago
    Sure, but it's no longer the device people have to be default. Kids usually aren't in a position to order expensive and/or niche stuff on a whim...
    - Godel_unicode 8y ago
      Fortunately, those kids frequently have parents who care about their development and bemoan the unhackable nature of their phones.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sametmax 8y ago
Well, nowaday most people drive but can't fix their cars. Makes sense the same is happening with IT.
- kijin 8y ago
  Yup, not having to fix your own car happened one generation ago. Now it's happening to computers.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Like computers, it varied. Neither my parents nor I ever did our own car maintenance to any significant degree up to and including oil changes. And I don't think that's a particular outlier. OTOH, my dad did a significant amount of major renovation work with the fixer-upper house I grew up in. A lot of it comes down to choosing how you spend your time and what skills you choose to develop. Because you probably can't do everything yourself.
    - sametmax 8y ago
      The cost becomes exponential though. Learning to fix a tesla is not the same as learning to fix a 70' ford.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Sure. Some tasks are more accessible to someone willing to put in the time and buy a reasonable collection of tools than others. But even if I could, say, teach myself to build a deck or lay a brick patio--or a myriad of other tasks around my house and in my personal life, I'll probably still choose to let someone else handle some portion of them based on interest, money, perceived difficulty, available time, etc.
      - metaphor 8y ago
        I'd argue that it would actually be easier: modular, less component-level repair. The difference is Tesla won't sell you technical manuals, which are reserved for their chain of authorized service shops.
Yetanfou 8y ago
I'd put the top more or less at the rise of Linux, the BSD's and similar systems. While fiddling with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT might have given people the impression that they were 'programming' their PC's in reality all they did was find the right incantations to get their games to work. Porting one of the free OS's to new hardware is at a different level from shoving some drivers in high memory to make room for Doom. A bit of this lives on in porting e.g. newer versions of Android to hardware which has been left behind by the manufacturer without a shred of documentation or care. If and when one or more of the alternative mobile operating systems get a foothold this might open another avenue for this type of hacking.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  > I'd put the top more or less at the rise of Linux, the BSD's and similar systems. I'm not sure the two compare so well. Kids that fiddle with Linux do so out of curiosity. For the other kids, the closest you'll ever get to config file fiddling might be when they're forced to use Linux -- which could happen, for instance, when their techie parent refuses to have a Windows box or a Mac in the house. By contrast, take any household with a Windows box and a few kids. The latter will want to play games on the former sooner or later.
  - Yetanfou 8y ago
    I'd rather compare it with one family which bought their children a box of Lego or a similar construction toy while the other gave them access to a scrap heap with broken mopeds and lawnmowers. The Lego-endowned kids will make interesting constructions which don't really serve any purpose but stimulate their creativity while the scrap-heap kids repair the mopeds and build go-karts with the lawnmower parts, maybe one of them puts a chain saw engine on a skateboard or something similar. This also stimulates their creativity with the added advantage of them gaining access to a whole world of possibilities while teaching them skills which can - and often will - be of benefit later in life. Nothing against Lego, mind you, but I know from personal experience which of the two gives more satisfaction in the end, at least for kids resembling the one I was.
dsajames 8y ago
Yup. There was a time I could write out a win.ini file from memory and understanding all the options. Today, doing the same on any platform would be impossible. It's been many years. Computers have gotten far more complex and reliable. My uncle knew how to rebuild his car engine, I don't. Same thing.
- hopler 8y ago
  A few years ago if you downloaded a web page you could repair it with Greasemonkey and user scripts. Now web pages are React or native apps and near impossible to tinker
noir_lord 8y ago
I'm seeing this right now, I grew up programming (started at 7), at 9 I was way more computer fluent than my 9 year old step-son is now. I think it's simply that modern machines are (generally) so reliable that you never have to get under the hood to figure out what broke until you (rarely) do and then you have no conceptual framework for trying to resolve what is broken. His trouble shooting process is handing it to me and telling me "it's not working". I refuse to fix it unless he watches and pays attention to how I'm fixing it, slowly he's starting to understand that none of this stuff is magic. I don't care if has no interest in computers generally but I think it's important that he realises the devices/technology he interacts with isn't just a magic black box. He was interested in what I was programming the other day though so I told him we could build a website together as long as he chose the subject, wrote what he wanted to put on it and wrote the code with my supervision, inevitably it's going to be about Fortnite but I'll take whatever wins I can get. Generally I'll ask answer his questions with questions, we had a discussion about IP addresses the other day (though he had know idea what an IP address was) because he was curious how one computer "talks" to another so I asked a bunch of questions "Assuming you had lots of computers how would you tell one from the other" "I'd number them" "Ok, so what if you wanted to replace a computer but keep talking to it as if it was the old computer?" "I'd make it so the numbers could be changed for each computer", "OK, so you have millions of computers with millions of numbers how would you know which number went with which computer?" "well...I'd name them but in a way that I could say this name belongs to this number", I was proud, he pretty much figured out DNS without knowing DNS was a thing. So then I showed him the config panel for a web host and pointed out that his names and numbers where an actual thing.
- pm90 8y ago
  You're an amazing parent.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  Off topic, but you might be interested in this, it's an attempt at an API for fortnite stats etc. https://github.com/qlaffont/fortnite-api https://github.com/qlaffont/fortnite-api
- jeena 8y ago
codazoda 8y ago
I think it's just about desire and passion. I'm a computer programmer, recently writing zines that teach programming by creating art, and I was pretty sure my kids would be technically inclined. They aren't. They just don't have the same desire and that's okay. My zines, if you're interested. https://gumroad.com/l/splashofcode/hn https://gumroad.com/l/splashofcode/hn
jameshart 8y ago
we’re all outliers here. The majority of kids in the 90s were no more tech savvy than today’s median kid. Probably less. You’re likely in the 90th percentile for the hacker mindset - that most kids are less geeky than you are should not be a surprise.
- noja 8y ago
  the surprise is that we expected the opposite
EpicEng 8y ago
Sure, if you were part of the tiny fraction of kids who were actually tinkering with computers. Most weren't. I'm sure the overall level of technical competence is higher today.
- Kye 8y ago
  Seriously. There are 20-somethings now who got into development making Minecraft mods at the same age I was tinkering with autoexec.bat and QBasic.
dghughes 8y ago
Having 24MB of RAM but only 650KB usable was annoying and pressure me into learning.

drchiu 8y ago

Your comment about config.sys and autoexec.bat brought a smile to me. Definitely good old times. Also miss messing around hexadecimal editors to cheat in games.

alephnil 8y ago

In fact, it is much harder to tinker with technology than it used to be. Not only is it more complex, but phones are also locked down so you are not really able to control your own device, or it does at least require quite some effort to do so, and can't be done using the device itself. Both Apple and Google in practice discourage people from tinkering with the device.

c22 8y ago
It might be harder to tinker with The Device, but tinkering kids these days are not bereft of options. When I was a teenager I remember badly wanting a "386 single board computer" which I saw advertised in the pages of Popular Science for hundreds of dollars. Imagine the things I could do with a whole computer small enough to hold in one hand! It could breathe new life into my projects and bring my tinkering to a whole new level! Sadly this marvel was beyond my budget at the time but today you can buy dozens of such boards for a fraction of the price. Boards with a dizzying array of integrated peripherals teenage me wouldn't have even known what to do with. Today there are uncountable open source projects you can download immediately to run on these boards, whole sophisticated stacks which can be imported now and torn apart to be stitched back together tomorrow. A tech-interested teen today can buy devices with their pocket change that have more power and flexibility than any of the platforms I had access to as a kid.
- ghaff 8y ago
  It may be worth observing that the window when teenagers and younger were messing around with config.sys files and routinely building DOS computers from parts was actually pretty narrow. I'm a bit older and didn't touch a computer keyboard (actually a teletype) until late in high school and didn't even do much with computers in college. (I'm an engineer by training but not CS.) I was working when I got into PCs, initially as a way to do some engineering calculations and project tracking on my job. I agree that although consumption is the norm, the options and information available for those who want to go under the hood is pretty amazing today.
colmvp 8y ago
Maybe. I remember having a hard time searching for information when I was young, as it was pre-internet and I was reliant on my parents on driving me places like the library to access information. Nowadays, if you want to learn the ins and outs of something, you can order books online or watch informative video tutorials made by people who have been in the tech field for a significant amount of time.
- kyriakos 8y ago
  I think the lack of availability of information made us more creative. I was trying to build a side scroller game when I was a kid in Turbo Pascal, there was no Internet and nowhere I could find out how to do it. Even though I never managed it in the end I spent countless hours trying and coming up with my own solutions to problems. I wouldn't have been the developer I am today if someone just gave me Unity and YouTube to copy parts from tutorials without allowing me to understand how things work at the lower level.
Godel_unicode 8y ago
It's only harder if you make it harder and don't put any thought into it. Desktop computers still exist, and you can still order the parts to make your own. You can even buy cool glass cases where the parts are exposed and all light up. Raspberry pi are essentially free, and can be used for all kinds of interesting stuff. Do that. See also Razer synapse, the El gato streamdeck, programmable keyboards, all of which still exist. Phones are not the only computers.
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  Sure, but it's no longer the device people have to be default. Kids usually aren't in a position to order expensive and/or niche stuff on a whim...
  - Godel_unicode 8y ago
    Fortunately, those kids frequently have parents who care about their development and bemoan the unhackable nature of their phones.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sametmax 8y ago

Well, nowaday most people drive but can't fix their cars. Makes sense the same is happening with IT.

kijin 8y ago
Yup, not having to fix your own car happened one generation ago. Now it's happening to computers.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Like computers, it varied. Neither my parents nor I ever did our own car maintenance to any significant degree up to and including oil changes. And I don't think that's a particular outlier. OTOH, my dad did a significant amount of major renovation work with the fixer-upper house I grew up in. A lot of it comes down to choosing how you spend your time and what skills you choose to develop. Because you probably can't do everything yourself.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    The cost becomes exponential though. Learning to fix a tesla is not the same as learning to fix a 70' ford.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Sure. Some tasks are more accessible to someone willing to put in the time and buy a reasonable collection of tools than others. But even if I could, say, teach myself to build a deck or lay a brick patio--or a myriad of other tasks around my house and in my personal life, I'll probably still choose to let someone else handle some portion of them based on interest, money, perceived difficulty, available time, etc.
    - metaphor 8y ago
      I'd argue that it would actually be easier: modular, less component-level repair. The difference is Tesla won't sell you technical manuals, which are reserved for their chain of authorized service shops.

Yetanfou 8y ago

I'd put the top more or less at the rise of Linux, the BSD's and similar systems. While fiddling with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT might have given people the impression that they were 'programming' their PC's in reality all they did was find the right incantations to get their games to work. Porting one of the free OS's to new hardware is at a different level from shoving some drivers in high memory to make room for Doom. A bit of this lives on in porting e.g. newer versions of Android to hardware which has been left behind by the manufacturer without a shred of documentation or care. If and when one or more of the alternative mobile operating systems get a foothold this might open another avenue for this type of hacking.

ddebernardy 8y ago
> I'd put the top more or less at the rise of Linux, the BSD's and similar systems. I'm not sure the two compare so well. Kids that fiddle with Linux do so out of curiosity. For the other kids, the closest you'll ever get to config file fiddling might be when they're forced to use Linux -- which could happen, for instance, when their techie parent refuses to have a Windows box or a Mac in the house. By contrast, take any household with a Windows box and a few kids. The latter will want to play games on the former sooner or later.
- Yetanfou 8y ago
  I'd rather compare it with one family which bought their children a box of Lego or a similar construction toy while the other gave them access to a scrap heap with broken mopeds and lawnmowers. The Lego-endowned kids will make interesting constructions which don't really serve any purpose but stimulate their creativity while the scrap-heap kids repair the mopeds and build go-karts with the lawnmower parts, maybe one of them puts a chain saw engine on a skateboard or something similar. This also stimulates their creativity with the added advantage of them gaining access to a whole world of possibilities while teaching them skills which can - and often will - be of benefit later in life. Nothing against Lego, mind you, but I know from personal experience which of the two gives more satisfaction in the end, at least for kids resembling the one I was.

dsajames 8y ago

Yup. There was a time I could write out a win.ini file from memory and understanding all the options. Today, doing the same on any platform would be impossible. It's been many years. Computers have gotten far more complex and reliable. My uncle knew how to rebuild his car engine, I don't. Same thing.

hopler 8y ago
A few years ago if you downloaded a web page you could repair it with Greasemonkey and user scripts. Now web pages are React or native apps and near impossible to tinker

noir_lord 8y ago

I'm seeing this right now, I grew up programming (started at 7), at 9 I was way more computer fluent than my 9 year old step-son is now. I think it's simply that modern machines are (generally) so reliable that you never have to get under the hood to figure out what broke until you (rarely) do and then you have no conceptual framework for trying to resolve what is broken. His trouble shooting process is handing it to me and telling me "it's not working". I refuse to fix it unless he watches and pays attention to how I'm fixing it, slowly he's starting to understand that none of this stuff is magic. I don't care if has no interest in computers generally but I think it's important that he realises the devices/technology he interacts with isn't just a magic black box. He was interested in what I was programming the other day though so I told him we could build a website together as long as he chose the subject, wrote what he wanted to put on it and wrote the code with my supervision, inevitably it's going to be about Fortnite but I'll take whatever wins I can get. Generally I'll ask answer his questions with questions, we had a discussion about IP addresses the other day (though he had know idea what an IP address was) because he was curious how one computer "talks" to another so I asked a bunch of questions "Assuming you had lots of computers how would you tell one from the other" "I'd number them" "Ok, so what if you wanted to replace a computer but keep talking to it as if it was the old computer?" "I'd make it so the numbers could be changed for each computer", "OK, so you have millions of computers with millions of numbers how would you know which number went with which computer?" "well...I'd name them but in a way that I could say this name belongs to this number", I was proud, he pretty much figured out DNS without knowing DNS was a thing. So then I showed him the config panel for a web host and pointed out that his names and numbers where an actual thing.

pm90 8y ago
You're an amazing parent.
Godel_unicode 8y ago
Off topic, but you might be interested in this, it's an attempt at an API for fortnite stats etc. https://github.com/qlaffont/fortnite-api https://github.com/qlaffont/fortnite-api
jeena 8y ago

codazoda 8y ago

I think it's just about desire and passion. I'm a computer programmer, recently writing zines that teach programming by creating art, and I was pretty sure my kids would be technically inclined. They aren't. They just don't have the same desire and that's okay. My zines, if you're interested. https://gumroad.com/l/splashofcode/hn https://gumroad.com/l/splashofcode/hn

jameshart 8y ago

we’re all outliers here. The majority of kids in the 90s were no more tech savvy than today’s median kid. Probably less. You’re likely in the 90th percentile for the hacker mindset - that most kids are less geeky than you are should not be a surprise.

noja 8y ago
the surprise is that we expected the opposite

EpicEng 8y ago

Sure, if you were part of the tiny fraction of kids who were actually tinkering with computers. Most weren't. I'm sure the overall level of technical competence is higher today.

Kye 8y ago
Seriously. There are 20-somethings now who got into development making Minecraft mods at the same age I was tinkering with autoexec.bat and QBasic.

dghughes 8y ago

Having 24MB of RAM but only 650KB usable was annoying and pressure me into learning.