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Kids, I'd suspect. More and more of them are stuck exclusively on tablets. From what I can tell, there isn't even a version of Roblox Studio available. Scratch

Kids, I'd suspect. More and more of them are stuck exclusively on tablets. From what I can tell, there isn't even a version of Roblox Studio available. Scratch seems to work though.

pcdoodle 2y ago
That's a shame. Having a "project" is what kicks off learning the cool bits about computers. If you can't do it with the devices we're giving kids, we are robbing our future inventors.
- al_borland 2y ago
  We’re also making less capable employees. I’ve noticed most of the people we hire these days for dev roles have no idea how computers or operating systems work. I’ll have someone with a pretty impressive title reach out to me with a basic OS question, and I wonder how they got to where they are without this foundational knowledge. Most of this stuff I learned on my own when I got my first computer.
  - baq 2y ago
    There are people here on this forum openly admitting they don’t see how ‘knowing Linux’ is useful, so no point actually learning it. I have no idea if they really never learn and wing it until they become managers or become great cloud engineers who simply scale up instead of running strace.
    - al_borland 2y ago
      I don’t know how someone uses modern dev tools without understanding some very basics of the Linux CLI. I see this all the time. If a command in some documentation isn’t a straight copy/paste, they’re done for.
      - dagmx 2y ago
        Knowing Linux is different than knowing how to use a CLI. I dislike that the two are conflated. Firstly, Mac and Windows both offer a very mature command line interface. But also, I don’t think knowing Linux should require you to know the command line either. If other operating systems don’t require it, neither should Linux. If you’re focusing on “developer tools”, even then, what tools do most devs need that can’t be done from a UI? I live a lot of my time in the terminal but there’s very little that can’t actually be wrapped in a UI
        skeeter2020 2y ago
        all your points are valid, and you don't "need" the knowledge but it sure feels like the UI can get in the way of some things, mislead your formation of a mental model, or reduce the clarity & density of information. I find most source control tools with mouse-driven UIs like this.
        dagmx 2y ago
        I think CLI tools can help compartmentalise functionality and that can be helpful. But I think they can also obscure functionality the same way as a GUI tool. Take git for example, it’s much easier to visualize how it works from a GUI. Squashing is also faster in a GUI. But some other operations are clearer when you’re giving every flag yourself. Ultimately I think it comes down to the UX of something regardless of the form of UI it’s presented in.
    - dagmx 2y ago
      Let me flip that around on you: why would someone need to know Linux specifically for the majority of jobs out there? I’m very familiar with Linux. My day job for years was Linux based and I honestly do not think one needs to know it, or any other OS specifically , unless your job specifically requires it.
      - ninkendo 2y ago
        Your question is a trap because you’re not qualifying what type of job you’re talking about. I could say “because your code runs on Linux and you should learn it” and then you’ll just say “well I wasn’t talking about jobs writing code running on Linux”. Assuming the discussion is about a typical developer that runs code that is deployed to “the cloud”, and the cloud is basically 99% Linux, yes. You absolutely need to know enough about how Linux actually works to be effective at your job. Otherwise you’ll fall into the sort of trap zillions of “big data” engineers fall into, where you spend countless hours writing custom code that takes up terabytes of RAM that could have been a simple sed/awk/grep pipeline that uses a handful of kilobytes.
        dagmx 2y ago
        Surely, if my question is a trap then so is the initial premise I’m replying to? It doesn’t specify a job and that’s exactly what I’m calling out. Even your response assumes that a “typical” developer is one who deploys to the cloud , but what is that based off of? And how many of those need to interact with the cloud infrastructure itself? Your second point about taking up terabytes of RAM doesn’t really matter if it’s on the cloud or not, and certainly doesn’t matter if it’s Linux . It’s also assuming that you can’t have a UI frontend that just calls the necessary efficient code or CLI commands behind the hood. So my question remains: what percentage of jobs actually require you to know Linux specifically?
        ninkendo 2y ago
        I guess I sprung the trap. We can apply the principle of charity and assume that because OP was making this complaint at all, it was probably in the context of jobs where ostensibly there is plenty of value in learning Linux. You don’t need to ask for qualification here, it’s just assumed by context that, for OP’s point, these were probable roles that really should have Linux knowledge. But you turn that around and say “but why would you need Linux knowledge??!”, taking the least-charitably-possible interpretation of OP’s comment, as if they’re talking about janitors or something, challenging them to prove why the majority of jobs (!!??!!??) needs Linux knowledge. I dunno man, maybe because in their head they’re referring to a category of people for whom working Linux knowledge really should be expected, and it’s assumed that readers of their comment will probably understand that, and that they’re not going to be prompted to qualify every last thing they say. But sure. Yeah. Linux technically refers only to a Kernel and not the whole OS so people shouldn’t say “learning Linux” if they only mean a CLI and a basic unix-like environment. You’re very smart, thank god you’re here to clarify all of this for us. I need to stop with HN for a while, the level of pedantry has gotten absolutely out of control and I’m getting angry just reading this shit.
  - jaimex2 2y ago
    There have always been employees who are just helpless. It's great because we as parents can give our kids a huge boost by guiding them to learn on their own. Look up 'learned helplessness' The last part is making sure we teach our kids never to work for less than twice as much as everyone else.
- benoau 2y ago
  I think Swift Playgrounds with Xcode Cloud will give kids the full idea-to-app journey soon, but it's kind of a "the monkey paw curls" solution.

Kids, I'd suspect. More and more of them are stuck exclusively on tablets. From what I can tell, there isn't even a version of Roblox Studio available. Scratch seems to work though.

pcdoodle 2y ago

That's a shame. Having a "project" is what kicks off learning the cool bits about computers. If you can't do it with the devices we're giving kids, we are robbing our future inventors.

al_borland 2y ago
We’re also making less capable employees. I’ve noticed most of the people we hire these days for dev roles have no idea how computers or operating systems work. I’ll have someone with a pretty impressive title reach out to me with a basic OS question, and I wonder how they got to where they are without this foundational knowledge. Most of this stuff I learned on my own when I got my first computer.
- baq 2y ago
  There are people here on this forum openly admitting they don’t see how ‘knowing Linux’ is useful, so no point actually learning it. I have no idea if they really never learn and wing it until they become managers or become great cloud engineers who simply scale up instead of running strace.
  - al_borland 2y ago
    I don’t know how someone uses modern dev tools without understanding some very basics of the Linux CLI. I see this all the time. If a command in some documentation isn’t a straight copy/paste, they’re done for.
    - dagmx 2y ago
      Knowing Linux is different than knowing how to use a CLI. I dislike that the two are conflated. Firstly, Mac and Windows both offer a very mature command line interface. But also, I don’t think knowing Linux should require you to know the command line either. If other operating systems don’t require it, neither should Linux. If you’re focusing on “developer tools”, even then, what tools do most devs need that can’t be done from a UI? I live a lot of my time in the terminal but there’s very little that can’t actually be wrapped in a UI
      - skeeter2020 2y ago
        all your points are valid, and you don't "need" the knowledge but it sure feels like the UI can get in the way of some things, mislead your formation of a mental model, or reduce the clarity & density of information. I find most source control tools with mouse-driven UIs like this.
        dagmx 2y ago
        I think CLI tools can help compartmentalise functionality and that can be helpful. But I think they can also obscure functionality the same way as a GUI tool. Take git for example, it’s much easier to visualize how it works from a GUI. Squashing is also faster in a GUI. But some other operations are clearer when you’re giving every flag yourself. Ultimately I think it comes down to the UX of something regardless of the form of UI it’s presented in.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    Let me flip that around on you: why would someone need to know Linux specifically for the majority of jobs out there? I’m very familiar with Linux. My day job for years was Linux based and I honestly do not think one needs to know it, or any other OS specifically , unless your job specifically requires it.
    - ninkendo 2y ago
      Your question is a trap because you’re not qualifying what type of job you’re talking about. I could say “because your code runs on Linux and you should learn it” and then you’ll just say “well I wasn’t talking about jobs writing code running on Linux”. Assuming the discussion is about a typical developer that runs code that is deployed to “the cloud”, and the cloud is basically 99% Linux, yes. You absolutely need to know enough about how Linux actually works to be effective at your job. Otherwise you’ll fall into the sort of trap zillions of “big data” engineers fall into, where you spend countless hours writing custom code that takes up terabytes of RAM that could have been a simple sed/awk/grep pipeline that uses a handful of kilobytes.
      - dagmx 2y ago
        Surely, if my question is a trap then so is the initial premise I’m replying to? It doesn’t specify a job and that’s exactly what I’m calling out. Even your response assumes that a “typical” developer is one who deploys to the cloud , but what is that based off of? And how many of those need to interact with the cloud infrastructure itself? Your second point about taking up terabytes of RAM doesn’t really matter if it’s on the cloud or not, and certainly doesn’t matter if it’s Linux . It’s also assuming that you can’t have a UI frontend that just calls the necessary efficient code or CLI commands behind the hood. So my question remains: what percentage of jobs actually require you to know Linux specifically?
        ninkendo 2y ago
        I guess I sprung the trap. We can apply the principle of charity and assume that because OP was making this complaint at all, it was probably in the context of jobs where ostensibly there is plenty of value in learning Linux. You don’t need to ask for qualification here, it’s just assumed by context that, for OP’s point, these were probable roles that really should have Linux knowledge. But you turn that around and say “but why would you need Linux knowledge??!”, taking the least-charitably-possible interpretation of OP’s comment, as if they’re talking about janitors or something, challenging them to prove why the majority of jobs (!!??!!??) needs Linux knowledge. I dunno man, maybe because in their head they’re referring to a category of people for whom working Linux knowledge really should be expected, and it’s assumed that readers of their comment will probably understand that, and that they’re not going to be prompted to qualify every last thing they say. But sure. Yeah. Linux technically refers only to a Kernel and not the whole OS so people shouldn’t say “learning Linux” if they only mean a CLI and a basic unix-like environment. You’re very smart, thank god you’re here to clarify all of this for us. I need to stop with HN for a while, the level of pedantry has gotten absolutely out of control and I’m getting angry just reading this shit.
- jaimex2 2y ago
  There have always been employees who are just helpless. It's great because we as parents can give our kids a huge boost by guiding them to learn on their own. Look up 'learned helplessness' The last part is making sure we teach our kids never to work for less than twice as much as everyone else.
benoau 2y ago
I think Swift Playgrounds with Xcode Cloud will give kids the full idea-to-app journey soon, but it's kind of a "the monkey paw curls" solution.