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> By necessity, kids these days don't even need to learn what a file is. Videos are "on youtube". Documents are stored "in ms word". Coincidentally, I've been

> By necessity, kids these days don't even need to learn what a file is. Videos are "on youtube". Documents are stored "in ms word". Coincidentally, I've been thinking about that recently. My conclusion was that this couldn't be true, as it didn't make any sense. I mean, even when using a phone or a tablet, the pictures they take or the videos they make end up somewhere. And that somewhere must be found, to be able to upload their take to the app or the website of their choice, or to be edited in an app before uploading. So by extension, as that medium is "somewhere" on their device, they must be able, intuitively, to deduce the concept of a file? And the take on the median developer frightens me even more. Somehow it feels akin to giving a soldier a firearm and letting him off to go and fight. Surely that's going to end in disaster? Praise those that look a bit deeper and really want to know how a thing works Are people really that hermetic to understanding how the items and tool they use actually work?

kapitanjakc 2y ago
> Are people really that hermetic to understanding how the items and tool they use actually work? From what I've seen in some of our new recruits, yes. And those are technically educated people. In general public, I've noticed that if stuff is working well, people don't tend to take a deep look into how it works. I guess that's how different minds work right ? For example a curious mind wants to know how a thing behaves and how it works etc, whereas a visual mind would look for how it looks.
- fransje26 2y ago
  > From what I've seen in some of our new recruits, yes. And those are technically educated people. That's really the part I can't wrap my head around.. The first thing I tend to do when I encounter something new -a new phone, a new bike, new tools, etc- is to understand how it works, to see what I can do with it, what its limits are, and most importantly, if I can bend those limits to suit my needs.. Accepting something at face value is really not an option. Partly because, more often than not, that would also mean settling for mediocrity as "quality" seems to be a secondary target nowadays. Thing will not work how you want, things will break and will need to be repaired, some artificial constraints might be need to be circumvented. And on the other hand, there is always something interesting that can be learned by being curious. We are not all wired the same. But if the "technically educated" people are no longer "technical" than at least I shouldn't fear about future employability.
Arch485 2y ago
I'm 22, and most of my "not tech savvy" peers and anyone I've met under 20 have zero concept of how most tech actually works. The pictures taken on your phone are not "stored somewhere", they are stored "in Google" or "in iCloud" or "in the photos app". Documents are similarily "in Google" or "in Word". There's no intuitive relation between photos and documents being the same thing on the filesystem, nor is there a concept of the filesystem at all. Generally, things jusr "work" (until they don't) and nobody asks any questions. Now, I would like to clarify that this isn't a "darn kids these days" tangent, in fact, it's the opposite: darn adults these days won't teach their kids how to use the computer! I would expect/really hope that when my generation starts having kids, computer literacy will start going up again. But for now, it's totally in the drain. With respect to developers... Most of them know a lot less than they should. This is also an education/incentives problem.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago
  > darn adults these days won't teach their kids how to use the computer! I would bet most of the greyhaired people on here as well as those who were born at the time of the personal computer revolution didn't have parents who were proficient in a technology that was literally just made available to consumers yet those kids learn to use a computer on their own at a time where there was no internet available to check. Why do kids suddenly need to be taught personally when they are the first generation to have the greatest amount of resources to learn how to use a computer available for free, in multiple teaching styles, multiple formats, at different levels of detail? I feel this is related to the helicopter parent mentality that replaced parenting styles from earlier periods
  - Arch485 2y ago
    It ain't that deep. Back then, you had to understand the lower level concepts in order to use the computer... Nowadays, you don't. It's that simple.
    - bossyTeacher 2y ago
      Still an abstraction if you don't understand how each of the parts of the computer work. And that level of detail goes all the way down to the actual implementation of the logic gates. One who could also include how your monitor display work and the keyboard. Lower is not lowest.

kapitanjakc 2y ago

> Are people really that hermetic to understanding how the items and tool they use actually work? From what I've seen in some of our new recruits, yes. And those are technically educated people. In general public, I've noticed that if stuff is working well, people don't tend to take a deep look into how it works. I guess that's how different minds work right ? For example a curious mind wants to know how a thing behaves and how it works etc, whereas a visual mind would look for how it looks.

fransje26 2y ago
> From what I've seen in some of our new recruits, yes. And those are technically educated people. That's really the part I can't wrap my head around.. The first thing I tend to do when I encounter something new -a new phone, a new bike, new tools, etc- is to understand how it works, to see what I can do with it, what its limits are, and most importantly, if I can bend those limits to suit my needs.. Accepting something at face value is really not an option. Partly because, more often than not, that would also mean settling for mediocrity as "quality" seems to be a secondary target nowadays. Thing will not work how you want, things will break and will need to be repaired, some artificial constraints might be need to be circumvented. And on the other hand, there is always something interesting that can be learned by being curious. We are not all wired the same. But if the "technically educated" people are no longer "technical" than at least I shouldn't fear about future employability.

Arch485 2y ago

I'm 22, and most of my "not tech savvy" peers and anyone I've met under 20 have zero concept of how most tech actually works. The pictures taken on your phone are not "stored somewhere", they are stored "in Google" or "in iCloud" or "in the photos app". Documents are similarily "in Google" or "in Word". There's no intuitive relation between photos and documents being the same thing on the filesystem, nor is there a concept of the filesystem at all. Generally, things jusr "work" (until they don't) and nobody asks any questions. Now, I would like to clarify that this isn't a "darn kids these days" tangent, in fact, it's the opposite: darn adults these days won't teach their kids how to use the computer! I would expect/really hope that when my generation starts having kids, computer literacy will start going up again. But for now, it's totally in the drain. With respect to developers... Most of them know a lot less than they should. This is also an education/incentives problem.

bossyTeacher 2y ago
> darn adults these days won't teach their kids how to use the computer! I would bet most of the greyhaired people on here as well as those who were born at the time of the personal computer revolution didn't have parents who were proficient in a technology that was literally just made available to consumers yet those kids learn to use a computer on their own at a time where there was no internet available to check. Why do kids suddenly need to be taught personally when they are the first generation to have the greatest amount of resources to learn how to use a computer available for free, in multiple teaching styles, multiple formats, at different levels of detail? I feel this is related to the helicopter parent mentality that replaced parenting styles from earlier periods
- Arch485 2y ago
  It ain't that deep. Back then, you had to understand the lower level concepts in order to use the computer... Nowadays, you don't. It's that simple.
  - bossyTeacher 2y ago
    Still an abstraction if you don't understand how each of the parts of the computer work. And that level of detail goes all the way down to the actual implementation of the logic gates. One who could also include how your monitor display work and the keyboard. Lower is not lowest.