9 ms·

> "College campuses are the bane of our existence. You would think that college kids would be smart about these things but they are the absolute worst." This i

• RajT88 2y ago
  Well - kind of. PC gaming is bigger than ever before, and PC gaming was how a lot of my generation got into computers. My nephew for a while was very much one of those "grew up on devices" kind of kids - until he got off of gaming on phones and tablets, and got a gaming PC. Now he's reading about technology and tinkering and stuff.
  • blueflow 2y ago
    Its not the same. Nowadays you press a button in steam and the game is installed for you and just works. It does not provide an entrance into technical layers like configuring the soundblaster irq in config.sys did.
    • mardef 2y ago
      It's not the same, but I don't know if it's worse. My IRQ conflict resolution skills or knowledge about himem.sys aren't really useful these days. But I've seen genz kids do incredible things with Minecraft mods and the like that make me reminisce about quake modding. The masses are just blindly using devices, but the masses didn't even have a PC at home 30 years ago.
      • neuralRiot 2y ago
        It used to be that if you wanted to do gaming on a PC you started by building the PC.
        • dingnuts 2y ago
          That hasn't changed. Of course there are pre builts but there were twenty years ago, too. I should know -- I had one. I built my third gaming PC myself.
          • tharkun__ 2y ago
            There were pre builts many years before your 20 years ago too. I used to build my computers myself as well 30 years ago and my dad did 40 years ago ;)
        • RajT88 2y ago
          I dunno... My C64 required very little assembly.
      • CapitalistCartr 2y ago
        (Smile) 30 years ago was 1995, when most people did. You're thinking 1985. Forty years ago.
        • k1t 2y ago
          In 1995 around 1 in 3 US homes had a computer.
          • amatecha 2y ago
            Yeah in Canada it looks like about 28% of homes had a personal computer in 1995, according to Stats Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/56f0004m/2005012/c-g/c1-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/56f0004m/2005012/c-g/c1-...
      • EvanAnderson 2y ago
    • driverdan 2y ago
      > It does not provide an entrance into technical layers like configuring the soundblaster irq in config.sys did All that did was result in extreme frustration. My knowledge of creating game-specific boot disks to eek out 1k more memory did nothing for my ability to write software, except perhaps to appreciate having more RAM and good UX.
    • pajko 2y ago
      Many older games are shipped in a full DOSBox setup with preconfigured config.sys. The question is that is there any will to "conquer the past" and poke around, or not.
  • starkrights 2y ago
    I've seen both sides- my nephew is large into pc gaming, but is woefully unaware of how to operate a computer in most capacities. I only realized this when trying to help him troubleshoot and realizing he didn't really understand the concepts of archives or even folders. I don't even know how that's possible because he plays modded versions of some of his games- how you get by without knowing what a zip file works at the surface level is a mystery to me lol.
• amatecha 2y ago
  Yeah, I know someone who works in a high school and the average skill level is "struggles to figure out how to save a document on a USB stick". Kids know how to press the power button on an Xbox or tap an icon on their iPhone. The staff member I know is aware of ONE kid in the entire school who has used Linux. When I was a kid, basically every single kid who had a computer at home (and actually used it) knew how to defrag the hard drive (and probably install Windows lol), set IRQ values for their sound card, all that kind of stuff -- because you had to know this to even use it. My friends and I went on BBSes and later stuff like IRC and Hotline, ran Linux or pre-release versions of our respective OSes, set up our own bedroom LANs and personal game/web servers, etc. etc.. Indeed, as you say, I learned a lot about computers simply by wanting to circumvent the limitations that school admins put on the computers (especially as I wanted to utilize the full power the computers provided, as opposed to some sheltered/limited experience -- "At Ease" -- surprisingly reminiscent of smartphones/tablets today)... I went to great lengths to regain net access when my parents repeatedly revoked my access, again another huge learning opportunity.
  • nuancebydefault 2y ago
    I think we technical people have wrong perceptions of the past. When I was young, family members would say 'ah you know everything about computers, I can't get this (illegal) copy of game x working, please help.' 99 percent of people did NOT know how to resolve IRQ conflicts or even know that 'my documents' is just a folder on the C drive.
    • TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
      But we're talking about the current generation of "technical people" - CS students who don't know what a file system is. Or a command line. Or a compiler. There are some Minecraft superbrains doing incredible things, but the median level of experience and insight seems much lower.
    • amatecha 2y ago
      I know what you mean, but I'm also specifically calling out the "percentage of homes with computers" and their respective technical literacy. My friends and I, as kids, knew "everything" about computers and how to operate them, and there was this base level of knowledge that pretty much every computer-owning kid had. I remember one friend figured out himself how to hex-edit his WarCraft 1 save files, this would have been at the age of 10 or 11, with zero instruction/guidance from parents or anything. I'd be impressed today if you found a singular kid in an entire high school who can hex-edit anything, let alone game saves, despite probably every single household of every student in that school having at least one personal computer, if not more. Simultaneously, there's an important aspect that computers and the software for them are more abstract than ever, so "hex editing" is a pretty obscure thing for someone to have any reason to do. Regardless, being able to save the currently-open Microsoft Word document to the USB stick one just inserted is pretty much the bare minimum of technical literacy I expect from anyone who has a computer at home -- yet this is apparently not the case. I'm talking like, even on a Mac, students couldn't figure it out. My conclusion here is that, as many people lament, there was a spike in time where computer enthusiasm was a real thing, where a relatively high % of kids wanted to "know everything about computers", but now computers are normal and boring and most people see them as "thing to launch game/chat/web on", for better or for worse (and for a wide variety of reasons).
• bombcar 2y ago
  I don't know if it's a "uses tech" issue or just not realizing the steps needed. Even we knew you had to go to the campus gate to meet Dominos after dark (when the gate would be automatically closed). There was no fancy intercom ability to remotely open it.
• ericmcer 2y ago
  Same I just was talking with my daughter (16) about this because she hated her intro programming class in high school. No biggie if it isn't for her, slightly disappointing that I can't share knowledge, but she should pursue what she enjoys. What irked me was she claimed "I just hate being on the computer", but her screen time on the phone easily crests 8 hours daily. Maybe we are just entering a similar phase to auto mechanics. In the 1950s anyone who owned a car was at least somewhat proficient in its inner workings, now many people need to consult the manual to figure out how to pop their hood.
  • drivers99 2y ago
    There's a reason for that. I ran across a video recently that talked about how his dad would replace an engine over the weekend. But then he showed what the old cars looked like under the hood (very simple with lots of empty space) and new cars (very complicated). More importantly, he showed the manuals that came with the car. The old car's manual showed how the engine was put together and explained what everything did, and how to rebuild it. The new manual was only full of warnings and told you to take it to the dealer for everything. Think about how I (and probably you) learned computers. My IBM PC has a manual that has a page just to show where the power switch is and how to use your hand to flip it. It has a diagram for what the keyboard cable looks like when it's plugged in correctly. It continues on and on and tells you how to open it and what the dip switch settings do. People always thought I was a computer wiz kid when I all I ever did was read the manuals and try out what they said.
    • noduerme 2y ago
      Same. I learned to code as a kid by reading the manual that came with my brother's TRS-80 Model 100 "laptop". The manual contained a complete documentation of the BASIC language that came on the computer. The computer itself, other than a couple simple built-in note-taking and calendar programs, was mainly designed for you to write your own programs for your own use. I remember the first time when I was 8 years old that I got past IF and GOTO and figured out what an array was. Suddenly all kinds of things were possible.
• freddie_mercury 2y ago
  I saw someone joke that there's only one generation in the history of mankind that knows how to set the time on a microwave. Our parents couldn't do it. And now our children can't do it.
  • jwiz 2y ago
    I have heard that told with “VCR” in place of microwave. We still have a microwave that needs clock set when power fails. We do not have a VCR.
    • nuancebydefault 2y ago
      Only our gen knows how to hook up and how to enter the main menu of a DVD player.
  • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    We won't be able to do it either soon, as they will mandate connecting with it through an app and we're like fuck that. (if we're not already there)
• ekianjo 2y ago
  Yeah, younger generations have no clue how to use computers. They just know how to consume content. The level of IT literacy is at all times low.
• Terr_ 2y ago
  [Millennial take] When older generations say "the kids these days are so good with computers", it's because they are incorrectly inferring competence from confidence. In a way, the kids are more capable, but mainly because of attitudes rather than knowledge. The devices the (grand-)kids are using are much more explorable and idiot-proofed. Nobody is going to make a single "dd" typo and erase their drive.
  • dijksterhuis 2y ago
    > Nobody is going to make a single "dd" typo and erase their drive. Alas, how does one learn if one cannot dd the wrong hard drive, wiping all the films you've spent most of the summer illegally downloading at night because you only had a dial up connection at the time.
    • devilbunny 2y ago
      I am very lucky that my youthful years were the mid 90s, when mp3s were still too slow to encode and DVD didn’t exist. I got to accidentally wipe or crash drives on purely experimental computers.
  • ksp-atlas 2y ago
    I mean, I'm considered gen Z and I've definitely dd-ed my fair share of drives...
    • DaSHacka 2y ago
      You've never truly lived until you've had to recover an accidentally-wiped LUKS header to find that one semester-long final project buried in the depths of your computer's filesystem that's due tomorrow, where of course you never bothered to back it up anywhere :) Perhaps these purported "itoddler" peers of ours were on to something, after all...
• jhbadger 2y ago
  Definitely. I recently taught a class with a practical computer component and many undergraduates seemed to have a hard time understanding where their files were saved -- even at a GUI level, not talking about the command line. But it makes sense if their primary tech experience was with phones and tablets. The idea of a file system may never have occurred to them (even if most phones and tablets really run a UNIX-derived OS behind the scenes).
  • tharkun__ 2y ago
    So true. Fortunately I had my kids (well one of them anyway) recently complain to me about how their teachers "don't know anything about computers" and how they "cheated" by using actual computer software that was much better than the "mandatory to use" software on the school tablets. Not all hope is lost.
  • DaSHacka 2y ago
    It's unbelievably bad. I know 3rd and 4th year IT/Cybersecurity students that don't understand how to ssh into servers and the different layers of the OSI model. I hate to sound insufferable, but I really truly believe some people are just too stupid for this field. I'm so sick of dealing with them. Yay job security?
    • skinner927 2y ago
      We have the “get a job in tech because it pays well” generation entering the workforce. They have no passion, no true interest in the field. Thankfully, they’re pretty easy to spot in interviews.
    • phatskat 2y ago
      Which is wild to me. My high school offered a technology course that included NET certification testing sponsored by Cisco. Our final was to setup a local network on hardware, leave the room, and come back in to troubleshoot whatever the teacher broke. She would change three things - it might be a typo in your DNS records, a barely loose cable between two bridges, or a wiped hosts file, etc. We knew the OSI model and understood IP masking and shakes fists at cloud (computing)
• roughly 2y ago
  GenZ also grew up in an era where doing anything mildly interesting on a computer risks getting expelled and having the feds called. The shit I did to learn my trade as a kid would absolutely not fly today.
  • StayTrue 2y ago
    Yikes – this GenXer remembers being told the tools found in my account were grounds for expulsion but the meeting ended with employment.
    • hattmall 2y ago
      Netbus on a floppy, print out an enticing label and leave them around school. Half the teachers computers were infected. Good times.
  • DaSHacka 2y ago
    Some can still learn in spite of that, however. Arguably, that's even why some gravitate towards it in the first place.
  • jeffwask 2y ago
    The dark ugly places I travelled on IRC or BBS as a youngster. I saw a lot.
  • phatskat 2y ago
    In high school (2000) I had a course where I downloaded some (freely available) videos for my project. The wrong person caught wind and hauled me in under the computer policy that everyone signed that said “I promise not to download anything”. I made my case that it was 1) condoned by my teacher, 2) relevant to my project, and 3) literally going to websites downloads files (cookies were just stored in a folder back then, as well as temp files for caching) so everyone is in violation. Had they actually found out about the fact that we bypassed security measures on a bootable CD-ROM that allowed us full system access, including a nifty Visual Basic launcher to install Quake and GTA, or that we figured out every computer used VNC and they all had the same password stored in plaintext in the registry (which we accessed via that bootable media), or that we figured out the same password accessed every networked printer in the county so we could print our school’s logo on that week’s rival school’s printers in barely off-white ink…they’d have had a good case.
• giantg2 2y ago
  "with lower baseline computer / computer security skills than people think they have." I fear this is true with most life skills. Things are easier and it seems kids today are just handed more stuff. The freedoms and expectations in many areas are lower. Kids don't grow up due to age, they grow up due to experience. It seems we are pushing that farther down the road with each generation.
• wkat4242 2y ago
  Huh never knew that. Kinda good for me. I noticed that even the generation that came after me (I was born in the 70s) produced IT engineers with a bit less skills because they've never had to mess stuff. People these days are afraid to mess with the windows registry even. I used to manually patch blocks together when I deleted a file by mistake. These skills are getting less and less useful though now that everyone is happy to give up their privacy to big tech in return for something that 'just works' :(
• giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I realized this while working as a tutor for programming students at my college back in 2013... When people would ask or say they didn't know or understand really basic computer things (I can't remember what it was) I still showed them what they were, but I realized, not everyone grew up with computers the way I did. Some explore, but most people don't necessarily explore. I think people who grow up with computer games have a lot more exposure than normal users. Smartphones somewhat made computers irrelevant for most people.