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My nephew, a sharp kid who started his freshman year at college in September, saw me working on my computer a year ago. He asked what I was doing and I said, “

My nephew, a sharp kid who started his freshman year at college in September, saw me working on my computer a year ago. He asked what I was doing and I said, “making a website”. He asked, reasonably, how do you do that? Not wanting to get into details I said “it’s just writing some files that chrome can then read”. He asked, “what’s a file”? I told him, but I was floored. He’s not every kid, but it’s had me thinking about how younger folks (I’m 38) will see computers.

ptek 3y ago
A workmate (I do labouring and was doing traffic control that day) brought her teenage son a PS5. I don't know why parents would purchase consoles for their children as you don't learn any transferable skills (I guess you could be a streamer). I'm not saying being a sadist and give the kid a second hand laptop with *BSD because then the kid will want nothing to do with computers, especially if the laptop is cheap and doesn't have a working driver support (This is where Linux is better from my personal experience). This is also why I like HTML, I got a free internet CD with Netscape Navigator in 1996 when I was 12 and the three working examples (two with Netscape Navigator and one was a html email with Netscape Mail and News client) I had, I was able to play around with and create and learn basic HTML until I got a modem in 1998.
- dpig_ 3y ago
  > I don't know why parents would purchase consoles for their children as you don't learn any transferable skills It's plausible that parents may just want their children to enjoy some leisure? To not feel like every experience in childhood should be preparation for labour?
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    As a child, I was disappointed when I got a BBC B instead of a Megadrive. But I definitely learned more, and some of my leisure time was programming in BBC Basic.
    - Cockbrand 3y ago
      Weren’t there like 10 years between the BBC and the Megadrive?
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Yup. It was a very old computer for the time. You should've seen our cars.
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    Parent comment has big “alpha grindset” energy. Like they hadn’t considered the concept of “toys”.
- WWLink 3y ago
  In my own anecdotal experience, if you are a computer gamer, you miss out on all the "console exclusive" stuff. Stuff like Gran Tourismo or the latest Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy or whatever. I can't really remember. Then when it is a game everyone plays, it tends to be something where the console gamers can't play with the PC gamers so it's like "Hey I just got the new counterstrike!" "Oh that's awesome! I have that too! We should play sometime!" "Yea what's your PS5 handle?" "My what?" "You don't have a PS5?" "Nah I have a PC" and yea..... That is my anecdotal experience though, and it was always bolstered by the benefits of PC gaming - cheaper games, ample mods, lots of sales, and the biggest game library of any platform. Plus better performance. And I could text chat on my keyboard while playing Quake 3 back then haha. Sadly text chat in games has died off as an art, in favor of voice chat and all the problems voice chat comes with. lol. Edit: And of course, the PC is a tool, the game console is just a dumb appliance.
  - trostaft 3y ago
    Well it plays all ways. PC misses out on the console exclusives, consoles miss out on the PC exclusives, consoles themselves have different exclusives and don't interop. For people getting into gaming when they're young, a big influence is probably what their friend group is playing on, which in turn is probably inspired by whatever their parents decide to let them on. That or whatever games is latest hotness. When I was young Minecraft forcefully evangelized my friend group, which had previously been more nintendo/xbox, into PC gamers. The origins of a lot of my current interests and career go back to the initial questions of: Why is minecraft running at low FPS? How do I set up a minecraft server? It's a little different nowadays, when some of the biggest multiplayer titles are cross-platform.
    - matt_j 3y ago
      Moral of the story: make friends with PC nerds. I never had much time for consoles and I don’t feel like I missed out on much. Popular games come and go. The joy of doing whatever I can imagine with my PC is more than enough consolation.
- obmelvin 3y ago
  There are many people in tech industry who began to learn about coding precisely because of video games. Age of Empires II was essentially the first gateway to my career.
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    It was my gateway to a lifelong love of history and cultures.
- guyomes 3y ago
  > you don't learn any transferable skills Actually, playing video games is an activity that let you practice real-time thinking. Other activities with real-time thinking include music instruments, sports and social interactions. By real-time thinking, I mean an activity that requires you to think and act within short timelapses. It appears also that activities involving real-time thinking can be quite fun, and few course in schools involve real-time thinking. Now, learning new languages like html or how to fine-tune LLM can be quite fun. Learning how to draw nice pictures, or how to write nice books can be quite fun too. It's nice to let children explore different activities (or free internet CD if we speak about 1996) so that they can find the ones that resonate with their inner motivations.
- filmgirlcw 3y ago
  I also learned HTML in 1996 (when I was also 12), in part from a cover story in I wanna say PC Magazine. I had a modem and had access to an unlimited AOL account thanks to my school’s computer lab teacher not doing a great job of hiding the password for the account (she also trusted me and my best friend quite a bit…trust we only abused insofar as we stole AOL from the county, back when it was still hourly and not unlimited for everyone), but it’s a similar story. But you know what got me interested in computers to begin with? My Super Nintendo (and I guess my NES before that). So I rebuke the idea that video game consoles don’t teach transferable skills (what the fuck that is supposed to mean) and that they don’t unlock wonder and excitement about technology in lots and lots of people, especially kids.
westurner 3y ago
K12 CS Framework only mentions "file" 4 times: https://k12cs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/K%E2%80%9312-CS-Framework-Statements-Concepts-View.pdf https://k12cs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/K%E2%80%9312-CS... Computer file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file File system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system
jimt1234 3y ago
I totally relate to this, but from the exact opposite perspective. I'm old-school, everything is a "file" to me. It's still weird to me that modern tools have abstracted away from "files" to just data. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just so different than how I came up.
bfung 3y ago
It’s ok, lots of “normal” folks today don’t really know what a file is either. They just know it’s an icon you can drag around. The kid at least asks questions!
layman51 3y ago
This reminds me of when I took an Intro to Programming with C++ course at a community college almost 10 years ago. There weren’t any basic computer usage prerequisites for this course. So I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised that at least one classmate did not know how to locate the source code file they created for their Hello World task in the first lecture.
Meekro 3y ago
I keep hearing about how the #1 profession every kid wants to be is YouTuber or influencer or something like that. But don't these professionals rely on high-end graphics/audio/video editing software to produce polished videos? Doesn't all of that require a high degree of computer skills, including using files?
- dvaun 3y ago
  Plenty of tools are popping up in this space. This seems like a growing market.
- jkepler 3y ago
  Sure, but if they reach that level or have some business acumen, they may just pay other people to deal with the video production and files.
HenryBemis 3y ago
Non-IT parents think their kids "are good with computers" because they can tap the next video on YT. IT parents show their kids what an OS is, what a File Explorer is, etc. Perhaps it's useless, but it sheds a light on that's behind those curtains, and kids start understanding the mechanics of 'stuff'.
starttoaster 3y ago
Plenty of bright people don't understand the first thing about computers, even in the generations that came before Gen Z. It just means their calling is potentially in something else. It is possible that the majority of techie youngsters are so used to the abstractions around dealing with filesystems on modern technology that files and filesystems elude them. It's also possibly your nephew is just sharp in another area that only requires understanding how to open and use a web browser, and that plenty of other youths exist with similar cultures around computers as we had growing up. Then again, a Gen Z software developer at the company I work at was confused on how to download a torrent (not that it matters but the contents of the torrent were legal.) That was at least a bit of a shock for me, as it's difficult for me to imagine someone getting into tech without having gone through the usual piracy phase (that phase lasting shorter or longer depending on the person.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asveikau 3y ago
What is he studying? I feel like a lot of older people in non technical fields, even if they work with files, could not reason through exactly how to define a file.
- loughnane 3y ago
  Went to a trade high school, the usual classes but a focus on carpentry.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Everything is a file!
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    You're a file.
    - walteweiss 3y ago
      I’m a file. You’re a file. Everything is a file!
- adolph 3y ago
  What is your definition of a file? Does it include bundles of files? What metadata does it include? Can it exist in more than one place? When a file is opened, is the file what is in processor and cache/RAM or what gets serialized to some persistent media? Metaphorically, is a file a sheet of paper or folded tan cardstock that holds many sheets of paper? Is a file unitary or can it contain other files? Is a directory a file? Is a link? Is a device a file?
  - asveikau 3y ago
    I mean, a file is an abstraction of several of the choices you are asking about in these questions, and different people will answer different things. ps. I've worked on filesystem drivers...
koolba 3y ago
Has he never copied a file to a usb stick? Or emailed an attachment? I don’t understand how this is possible.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  I haven't used a USB stick in years as a tech person and virtually all my day to day document processing is in the cloud. It wouldn't surprise me if the person in question does know what a file is, but doesn't work with them enough as files to really get it.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    It’s probably my paranoia but I assume something will go wrong with the network at the conference where I’m presenting. I usually have multiple types of backups.
- thanhhaimai 3y ago
  If your whole computer life is using Safari or clicking apps, then yes, you might not ever see a "file".
- bo1024 3y ago
  Phone and Chromebook. Kids through highschool might never see anything else. Assignments are in google drive, etc.
  - matteoraso 3y ago
    I can't speak for iPhones, but Android has a file system and the ability to create directories. I think it would be weird if Apple products didn't have that as well, even if it's a bit hidden. I don't have any form of evidence to back this up, but I think that this has more to do with apps, not the device that kids use. Having everything be an app makes it seem like you have multiple independent things on your device, and the device itself is nothing more than a way to connect to those apps.
  - adolph 3y ago
rolph 3y ago
perhaps writing the -apps, and -data, for the site, might have more signifigant meaning [despite not being entirely correct] relating to a mobile context.
owenpalmer 3y ago
I think your nephew is the exception, not the rule.
ace2358 3y ago
I’m not sure kids, especially recently born ones will ‘see’ computers. In the same way that most people don’t ‘see’ the abundant ressources around us. Air, water taps, power, cars, internet etc. These things will always have been there. Most children’s have a rectangle with multiple circles on it pointing at them from their first hour on earth.
tetris11 3y ago
The concept of a file itself is pretty interesting in itself though, as this buffer that lives on disk and is referenced to indirectly. In Linux, everything is a file. In Emacs, everything is a buffer, and then maybe a file.
- Levitz 3y ago
  Sure, the concept of file itself is an abstraction. It's a whole different thing to use an abstraction in order to make something understandable and to just handwave everything technical about it. It's not just a different thing.
mavhc 3y ago
Has he never filed paper in a filing cabinet? Our abstractions are out of date. I managed my own file system by writing down tape counter numbers on the cardboard cover of the cassette tape.

ptek 3y ago

A workmate (I do labouring and was doing traffic control that day) brought her teenage son a PS5. I don't know why parents would purchase consoles for their children as you don't learn any transferable skills (I guess you could be a streamer). I'm not saying being a sadist and give the kid a second hand laptop with *BSD because then the kid will want nothing to do with computers, especially if the laptop is cheap and doesn't have a working driver support (This is where Linux is better from my personal experience). This is also why I like HTML, I got a free internet CD with Netscape Navigator in 1996 when I was 12 and the three working examples (two with Netscape Navigator and one was a html email with Netscape Mail and News client) I had, I was able to play around with and create and learn basic HTML until I got a modem in 1998.

dpig_ 3y ago
> I don't know why parents would purchase consoles for their children as you don't learn any transferable skills It's plausible that parents may just want their children to enjoy some leisure? To not feel like every experience in childhood should be preparation for labour?
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  As a child, I was disappointed when I got a BBC B instead of a Megadrive. But I definitely learned more, and some of my leisure time was programming in BBC Basic.
  - Cockbrand 3y ago
    Weren’t there like 10 years between the BBC and the Megadrive?
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Yup. It was a very old computer for the time. You should've seen our cars.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Parent comment has big “alpha grindset” energy. Like they hadn’t considered the concept of “toys”.
WWLink 3y ago
In my own anecdotal experience, if you are a computer gamer, you miss out on all the "console exclusive" stuff. Stuff like Gran Tourismo or the latest Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy or whatever. I can't really remember. Then when it is a game everyone plays, it tends to be something where the console gamers can't play with the PC gamers so it's like "Hey I just got the new counterstrike!" "Oh that's awesome! I have that too! We should play sometime!" "Yea what's your PS5 handle?" "My what?" "You don't have a PS5?" "Nah I have a PC" and yea..... That is my anecdotal experience though, and it was always bolstered by the benefits of PC gaming - cheaper games, ample mods, lots of sales, and the biggest game library of any platform. Plus better performance. And I could text chat on my keyboard while playing Quake 3 back then haha. Sadly text chat in games has died off as an art, in favor of voice chat and all the problems voice chat comes with. lol. Edit: And of course, the PC is a tool, the game console is just a dumb appliance.
- trostaft 3y ago
  Well it plays all ways. PC misses out on the console exclusives, consoles miss out on the PC exclusives, consoles themselves have different exclusives and don't interop. For people getting into gaming when they're young, a big influence is probably what their friend group is playing on, which in turn is probably inspired by whatever their parents decide to let them on. That or whatever games is latest hotness. When I was young Minecraft forcefully evangelized my friend group, which had previously been more nintendo/xbox, into PC gamers. The origins of a lot of my current interests and career go back to the initial questions of: Why is minecraft running at low FPS? How do I set up a minecraft server? It's a little different nowadays, when some of the biggest multiplayer titles are cross-platform.
  - matt_j 3y ago
    Moral of the story: make friends with PC nerds. I never had much time for consoles and I don’t feel like I missed out on much. Popular games come and go. The joy of doing whatever I can imagine with my PC is more than enough consolation.
obmelvin 3y ago
There are many people in tech industry who began to learn about coding precisely because of video games. Age of Empires II was essentially the first gateway to my career.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  It was my gateway to a lifelong love of history and cultures.
guyomes 3y ago
> you don't learn any transferable skills Actually, playing video games is an activity that let you practice real-time thinking. Other activities with real-time thinking include music instruments, sports and social interactions. By real-time thinking, I mean an activity that requires you to think and act within short timelapses. It appears also that activities involving real-time thinking can be quite fun, and few course in schools involve real-time thinking. Now, learning new languages like html or how to fine-tune LLM can be quite fun. Learning how to draw nice pictures, or how to write nice books can be quite fun too. It's nice to let children explore different activities (or free internet CD if we speak about 1996) so that they can find the ones that resonate with their inner motivations.
filmgirlcw 3y ago
I also learned HTML in 1996 (when I was also 12), in part from a cover story in I wanna say PC Magazine. I had a modem and had access to an unlimited AOL account thanks to my school’s computer lab teacher not doing a great job of hiding the password for the account (she also trusted me and my best friend quite a bit…trust we only abused insofar as we stole AOL from the county, back when it was still hourly and not unlimited for everyone), but it’s a similar story. But you know what got me interested in computers to begin with? My Super Nintendo (and I guess my NES before that). So I rebuke the idea that video game consoles don’t teach transferable skills (what the fuck that is supposed to mean) and that they don’t unlock wonder and excitement about technology in lots and lots of people, especially kids.

westurner 3y ago

K12 CS Framework only mentions "file" 4 times: https://k12cs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/K%E2%80%9312-CS-Framework-Statements-Concepts-View.pdf https://k12cs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/K%E2%80%9312-CS... Computer file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file File system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system

jimt1234 3y ago

I totally relate to this, but from the exact opposite perspective. I'm old-school, everything is a "file" to me. It's still weird to me that modern tools have abstracted away from "files" to just data. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just so different than how I came up.

bfung 3y ago

It’s ok, lots of “normal” folks today don’t really know what a file is either. They just know it’s an icon you can drag around. The kid at least asks questions!

layman51 3y ago

This reminds me of when I took an Intro to Programming with C++ course at a community college almost 10 years ago. There weren’t any basic computer usage prerequisites for this course. So I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised that at least one classmate did not know how to locate the source code file they created for their Hello World task in the first lecture.

Meekro 3y ago

I keep hearing about how the #1 profession every kid wants to be is YouTuber or influencer or something like that. But don't these professionals rely on high-end graphics/audio/video editing software to produce polished videos? Doesn't all of that require a high degree of computer skills, including using files?

dvaun 3y ago
Plenty of tools are popping up in this space. This seems like a growing market.
jkepler 3y ago
Sure, but if they reach that level or have some business acumen, they may just pay other people to deal with the video production and files.

HenryBemis 3y ago

Non-IT parents think their kids "are good with computers" because they can tap the next video on YT. IT parents show their kids what an OS is, what a File Explorer is, etc. Perhaps it's useless, but it sheds a light on that's behind those curtains, and kids start understanding the mechanics of 'stuff'.

starttoaster 3y ago

Plenty of bright people don't understand the first thing about computers, even in the generations that came before Gen Z. It just means their calling is potentially in something else. It is possible that the majority of techie youngsters are so used to the abstractions around dealing with filesystems on modern technology that files and filesystems elude them. It's also possibly your nephew is just sharp in another area that only requires understanding how to open and use a web browser, and that plenty of other youths exist with similar cultures around computers as we had growing up. Then again, a Gen Z software developer at the company I work at was confused on how to download a torrent (not that it matters but the contents of the torrent were legal.) That was at least a bit of a shock for me, as it's difficult for me to imagine someone getting into tech without having gone through the usual piracy phase (that phase lasting shorter or longer depending on the person.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

asveikau 3y ago

What is he studying? I feel like a lot of older people in non technical fields, even if they work with files, could not reason through exactly how to define a file.

loughnane 3y ago
Went to a trade high school, the usual classes but a focus on carpentry.
walteweiss 3y ago
Everything is a file!
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  You're a file.
  - walteweiss 3y ago
    I’m a file. You’re a file. Everything is a file!
adolph 3y ago
What is your definition of a file? Does it include bundles of files? What metadata does it include? Can it exist in more than one place? When a file is opened, is the file what is in processor and cache/RAM or what gets serialized to some persistent media? Metaphorically, is a file a sheet of paper or folded tan cardstock that holds many sheets of paper? Is a file unitary or can it contain other files? Is a directory a file? Is a link? Is a device a file?
- asveikau 3y ago
  I mean, a file is an abstraction of several of the choices you are asking about in these questions, and different people will answer different things. ps. I've worked on filesystem drivers...

koolba 3y ago

Has he never copied a file to a usb stick? Or emailed an attachment? I don’t understand how this is possible.

MattGaiser 3y ago
I haven't used a USB stick in years as a tech person and virtually all my day to day document processing is in the cloud. It wouldn't surprise me if the person in question does know what a file is, but doesn't work with them enough as files to really get it.
- ghaff 3y ago
  It’s probably my paranoia but I assume something will go wrong with the network at the conference where I’m presenting. I usually have multiple types of backups.
thanhhaimai 3y ago
If your whole computer life is using Safari or clicking apps, then yes, you might not ever see a "file".
bo1024 3y ago
Phone and Chromebook. Kids through highschool might never see anything else. Assignments are in google drive, etc.
- matteoraso 3y ago
  I can't speak for iPhones, but Android has a file system and the ability to create directories. I think it would be weird if Apple products didn't have that as well, even if it's a bit hidden. I don't have any form of evidence to back this up, but I think that this has more to do with apps, not the device that kids use. Having everything be an app makes it seem like you have multiple independent things on your device, and the device itself is nothing more than a way to connect to those apps.
- adolph 3y ago

rolph 3y ago

perhaps writing the -apps, and -data, for the site, might have more signifigant meaning [despite not being entirely correct] relating to a mobile context.

owenpalmer 3y ago

I think your nephew is the exception, not the rule.

ace2358 3y ago

I’m not sure kids, especially recently born ones will ‘see’ computers. In the same way that most people don’t ‘see’ the abundant ressources around us. Air, water taps, power, cars, internet etc. These things will always have been there. Most children’s have a rectangle with multiple circles on it pointing at them from their first hour on earth.

tetris11 3y ago

The concept of a file itself is pretty interesting in itself though, as this buffer that lives on disk and is referenced to indirectly. In Linux, everything is a file. In Emacs, everything is a buffer, and then maybe a file.

Levitz 3y ago
Sure, the concept of file itself is an abstraction. It's a whole different thing to use an abstraction in order to make something understandable and to just handwave everything technical about it. It's not just a different thing.

mavhc 3y ago

Has he never filed paper in a filing cabinet? Our abstractions are out of date. I managed my own file system by writing down tape counter numbers on the cardboard cover of the cassette tape.