6 ms·

I saw a 6th grader using filezilla to update his website the other day. 99% of people didnt know what ftp was 10 years ago, that hasn't changed. Every generatio

by kart23 7y ago

I saw a 6th grader using filezilla to update his website the other day. 99% of people didnt know what ftp was 10 years ago, that hasn't changed. Every generation loves to trash the one below it, that certainly will never change.

mlyle 7y ago
I think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days. Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user. Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-- especially at an early age.
- sophiebits 7y ago
  You used to need a certain amount of technical competence to be literate. Now we teach everyone to read and write! What is the world coming to?
  - mlyle 7y ago
    That's hardly what I said. It's good that computers are more accessible. But by making it easy, we're providing less opportunity for people who are curious about innards at an early age. Of course, now we're teaching computational thinking in schools, but IMO it's a really big open question whether our attempts to teach that work, especially in elementary school.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    It's more like "now we don't have to teach everyone to read and write, we do the (filtered/censored/etc.) communication for them."
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. I'm a fairly young person. What I've seen over the past few years is technology is finally useful and accessible to everyone. Forcing people to use the command line isn't a useful skill for 99.5% of people anymore, it's just senseless gatekeeping to make it a computer requirement. I got into computers by ripping into Windows XP internals and learning how it worked when I was a kid, no command line needed. There will always be people who are more curious about how things work. Have faith that kids are smart enough to use the internet to learn for themselves. Just because technology is easier does not mean it's harder to learn how to be "technically competent". Remember that the definition of technically competent moves with the times, too.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    I think you missed my point. Before, a huge portion of the population was using computers and had to peek under the hood. This means you got a lot more people who got curious about how the machine worked very early on. I am teaching STEM stuff to kids these days-- programming in Scratch and python, etc. My friends and I, back in the day, were all poking around memory, rekeying Basic programs from magazines and moving on to writing Turbo Pascal programs, etc, at a pretty early age. I don't see this with the kids I teach. There's not as good of a path/funnel there, and I'm not sure whether the stuff we do to e.g. teach programming in elementary school, etc, are analogous exercises in computational thinking.
    - kart23 7y ago
      I agree with you. I was in high school a couple years ago, and lucky enough to take cs classes. What I experienced was not good. Most of the kids just showed up, did the projects, passed tests, and got A's. But they were not good programmers. They were just going through the motions, if you gave them something slightly outside their knowledge, they would likely just give up. I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the way cs is taught, but its hard to teach computers in a class setting. You really need to inspire that deep interest that so many of us have in computers, and it's very tough to get at that in the modern day. Because of the overload of information and media that kids are getting thrown at them these days. It's very easy to sit down 20 kids and make a game in scratch, and call it computer science. We should have kids use technologies that professionals use in their work. Setup a flask web server, write a scraper, use apis, etc. Stop dumbing down things, expect more from the younger generation. Those coding bootcamps sure as heck don't teach scratch right?
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  Isn't this a good thing? Understanding the inner workings of computers is not a fundamental good. Solving problems and achieving one's goals are the important thing. If people can use computers to solve problems better today but they don't understand how bootloaders work then I think that is a good trade off.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
I hope he didn’t download the adware/malware infested version of FileZilla though.

by kart23 7y ago

mlyle 7y ago

I think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days. Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user. Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-- especially at an early age.

sophiebits 7y ago
You used to need a certain amount of technical competence to be literate. Now we teach everyone to read and write! What is the world coming to?
- mlyle 7y ago
  That's hardly what I said. It's good that computers are more accessible. But by making it easy, we're providing less opportunity for people who are curious about innards at an early age. Of course, now we're teaching computational thinking in schools, but IMO it's a really big open question whether our attempts to teach that work, especially in elementary school.
- userbinator 7y ago
  It's more like "now we don't have to teach everyone to read and write, we do the (filtered/censored/etc.) communication for them."
cameronbrown 7y ago
> Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. I'm a fairly young person. What I've seen over the past few years is technology is finally useful and accessible to everyone. Forcing people to use the command line isn't a useful skill for 99.5% of people anymore, it's just senseless gatekeeping to make it a computer requirement. I got into computers by ripping into Windows XP internals and learning how it worked when I was a kid, no command line needed. There will always be people who are more curious about how things work. Have faith that kids are smart enough to use the internet to learn for themselves. Just because technology is easier does not mean it's harder to learn how to be "technically competent". Remember that the definition of technically competent moves with the times, too.
- mlyle 7y ago
  I think you missed my point. Before, a huge portion of the population was using computers and had to peek under the hood. This means you got a lot more people who got curious about how the machine worked very early on. I am teaching STEM stuff to kids these days-- programming in Scratch and python, etc. My friends and I, back in the day, were all poking around memory, rekeying Basic programs from magazines and moving on to writing Turbo Pascal programs, etc, at a pretty early age. I don't see this with the kids I teach. There's not as good of a path/funnel there, and I'm not sure whether the stuff we do to e.g. teach programming in elementary school, etc, are analogous exercises in computational thinking.
  - kart23 7y ago
    I agree with you. I was in high school a couple years ago, and lucky enough to take cs classes. What I experienced was not good. Most of the kids just showed up, did the projects, passed tests, and got A's. But they were not good programmers. They were just going through the motions, if you gave them something slightly outside their knowledge, they would likely just give up. I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the way cs is taught, but its hard to teach computers in a class setting. You really need to inspire that deep interest that so many of us have in computers, and it's very tough to get at that in the modern day. Because of the overload of information and media that kids are getting thrown at them these days. It's very easy to sit down 20 kids and make a game in scratch, and call it computer science. We should have kids use technologies that professionals use in their work. Setup a flask web server, write a scraper, use apis, etc. Stop dumbing down things, expect more from the younger generation. Those coding bootcamps sure as heck don't teach scratch right?
UncleMeat 7y ago
Isn't this a good thing? Understanding the inner workings of computers is not a fundamental good. Solving problems and achieving one's goals are the important thing. If people can use computers to solve problems better today but they don't understand how bootloaders work then I think that is a good trade off.

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago

I hope he didn’t download the adware/malware infested version of FileZilla though.