3 ms·

Curious if this is at millennials for not teaching the next generation(s) or at genz/alpha for not teaching themselves.

by meroes 2y ago

TechDebtDevin 2y ago
Ive encountered a shocking amount of 30yr olds that don't own a computer or know how to properly type. I'd say GenZ and Alpha have plenty of computer literacy as laptops were better integrated into education by time they got or will get to high school. Outside of some AP classes that had their own computer labs most kids in my age group (early 30s) took one computer class in their entire secondary education. I knew one other person in my entire high school that coded. Hell you can code Python on ti-84s now.
- redwall_hp 2y ago
  They're all issued Chromebooks and live in a glorified browser and GSuite. There's something of an epidemic of students landing in college CS programs and not knowing how to manage files outside of Google Drive. Millennials got to use real computers growing up. Gens Z and Alpha got locked down Google appliances tightly monitored by schools.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    My kid still cannot really grasp the concept of "things being stored locally on the computer or on the phone vs. things being on the Internet". She doesn't understand why some apps require Internet and others don't. No concept of the boundary between local and network. "What do you mean 'it's stored on the phone'? YouTube is stored on the phone, right?" I think a lot of this is developers intentionally blurring the line between local and cloud storage. If you were a layman iPhone user, would you be able to confidently tell me which of your photos are stored in iCloud and which are stored on your device? Apple is deliberately obfuscating it.
    - pdntspa 2y ago
      > I think a lot of this is developers intentionally blurring the line between local and cloud storage. If you were a layman iPhone user, would you be able to confidently tell me which of your photos are stored in iCloud and which are stored on your device? Apple is deliberately obfuscating it. It is exactly this. I'd like to think it is less developers and more marketing/product manager/bizdev types trying to keep their customers ignorant as a form of lock-in.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        When I say "developers" I usually mean the entire development apparatus, including designers, product, and, yes, programmers. They all have agency, all work together to produce the product, and should share the honor and/or blame for their product.
    - saidwhatisaid 2y ago
      And not even in a "hey, the network is also a filesystem!" sorta transparent way, either. It's an obscure patchwork of half-baked ideas (especially iCloud. To this day, I'm just trusting that I'll be able to do a phone restore, if need be). It doesn't help that network-transparent storage is _hard_. Before, if you wrote something to storage, there was a preeeeetty good chance it was going to wind up on disk. Yes, yes, disk IO is a dark art that's still probably full of subtle bugs, and there is no God, but generally: file -> disk was, and is, solid. Now, you have file -> several HTTP round trips -> ope, fiber cut -> hung. And that's just to turn on your living room lights! I've seen networking code that is supposed to provide the same guarantees that the people writing filesystems and disk drivers do, and I can't say it usually succeeds. And people wonder why everything feels more and more broken.
  - saidwhatisaid 2y ago
    I fully believe this, but that is just bonkerstown to me. I mean, okay, I guess the Plan 9 folks eventually won, I just didn't expect "the computer" to be "Google.com". Of course, university IS meant to be an introduction to whatever your field is, but those of us with in-depth computer knowledge, even basic knowledge of something like Java, had a much easier time of it. I don't envy the youths today.
entropicdrifter 2y ago
As a millenial, I don't think it's either of our generations. IMO, the issue is just due to the general culture shift from generalized computers being used in the average person's daily life to smartphones becoming sufficient for most people's computing/socializing/shopping needs. Well, also Chromebooks, which basically take away the opportunity to learn how to really use a computer in favor of only teaching you how to use a laptop to open Chrome. When everything just works, you don't sit around half a day troubleshooting and having to do so feels exceptionally bad when you didn't spend half your childhood doing it to get your brand new game/graphics card/weird controller to work. Most of my computer skills were self taught because I wanted to figure out how to do stuff with my computer as a kid without spending money, or how to upgrade my PC while spending as little as possible.
lancesells 2y ago
I think it's a little of: generations being more disconnected than before, cars and other items being more complicated and less easily repairable (remember you used to pop out a battery on your phone), a culture of buying cheap and replacing instead of taking the time, energy, and learning to fix. I think looking at the prevalance of something like DoorDash delivering fast food to people shows you how strange culture has gotten.
pdntspa 2y ago
This is aimed directly at millenials; schoolteachers have been sounding the alarm on this for the past 10-15 years.
self_awareness 2y ago
You can't teach a person who doesn't want to learn.

Curious if this is at millennials for not teaching the next generation(s) or at genz/alpha for not teaching themselves.

by meroes 2y ago

Curious if this is at millennials for not teaching the next generation(s) or at genz/alpha for not teaching themselves.

Ive encountered a shocking amount of 30yr olds that don't own a computer or know how to properly type. I'd say GenZ and Alpha have plenty of computer literacy as laptops were better integrated into education by time they got or will get to high school. Outside of some AP classes that had their own computer labs most kids in my age group (early 30s) took one computer class in their entire secondary education. I knew one other person in my entire high school that coded. Hell you can code Python on ti-84s now.

redwall_hp 2y ago
They're all issued Chromebooks and live in a glorified browser and GSuite. There's something of an epidemic of students landing in college CS programs and not knowing how to manage files outside of Google Drive. Millennials got to use real computers growing up. Gens Z and Alpha got locked down Google appliances tightly monitored by schools.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  My kid still cannot really grasp the concept of "things being stored locally on the computer or on the phone vs. things being on the Internet". She doesn't understand why some apps require Internet and others don't. No concept of the boundary between local and network. "What do you mean 'it's stored on the phone'? YouTube is stored on the phone, right?" I think a lot of this is developers intentionally blurring the line between local and cloud storage. If you were a layman iPhone user, would you be able to confidently tell me which of your photos are stored in iCloud and which are stored on your device? Apple is deliberately obfuscating it.
  - pdntspa 2y ago
    > I think a lot of this is developers intentionally blurring the line between local and cloud storage. If you were a layman iPhone user, would you be able to confidently tell me which of your photos are stored in iCloud and which are stored on your device? Apple is deliberately obfuscating it. It is exactly this. I'd like to think it is less developers and more marketing/product manager/bizdev types trying to keep their customers ignorant as a form of lock-in.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      When I say "developers" I usually mean the entire development apparatus, including designers, product, and, yes, programmers. They all have agency, all work together to produce the product, and should share the honor and/or blame for their product.
  - saidwhatisaid 2y ago
    And not even in a "hey, the network is also a filesystem!" sorta transparent way, either. It's an obscure patchwork of half-baked ideas (especially iCloud. To this day, I'm just trusting that I'll be able to do a phone restore, if need be). It doesn't help that network-transparent storage is _hard_. Before, if you wrote something to storage, there was a preeeeetty good chance it was going to wind up on disk. Yes, yes, disk IO is a dark art that's still probably full of subtle bugs, and there is no God, but generally: file -> disk was, and is, solid. Now, you have file -> several HTTP round trips -> ope, fiber cut -> hung. And that's just to turn on your living room lights! I've seen networking code that is supposed to provide the same guarantees that the people writing filesystems and disk drivers do, and I can't say it usually succeeds. And people wonder why everything feels more and more broken.
- saidwhatisaid 2y ago
  I fully believe this, but that is just bonkerstown to me. I mean, okay, I guess the Plan 9 folks eventually won, I just didn't expect "the computer" to be "Google.com". Of course, university IS meant to be an introduction to whatever your field is, but those of us with in-depth computer knowledge, even basic knowledge of something like Java, had a much easier time of it. I don't envy the youths today.

entropicdrifter 2y ago

As a millenial, I don't think it's either of our generations. IMO, the issue is just due to the general culture shift from generalized computers being used in the average person's daily life to smartphones becoming sufficient for most people's computing/socializing/shopping needs. Well, also Chromebooks, which basically take away the opportunity to learn how to really use a computer in favor of only teaching you how to use a laptop to open Chrome. When everything just works, you don't sit around half a day troubleshooting and having to do so feels exceptionally bad when you didn't spend half your childhood doing it to get your brand new game/graphics card/weird controller to work. Most of my computer skills were self taught because I wanted to figure out how to do stuff with my computer as a kid without spending money, or how to upgrade my PC while spending as little as possible.

lancesells 2y ago

I think it's a little of: generations being more disconnected than before, cars and other items being more complicated and less easily repairable (remember you used to pop out a battery on your phone), a culture of buying cheap and replacing instead of taking the time, energy, and learning to fix. I think looking at the prevalance of something like DoorDash delivering fast food to people shows you how strange culture has gotten.

pdntspa 2y ago

This is aimed directly at millenials; schoolteachers have been sounding the alarm on this for the past 10-15 years.

self_awareness 2y ago

You can't teach a person who doesn't want to learn.