4 ms·

What's wild to me is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are basically computer illiterate by and large. The reason old computers were fun is because all the hip young mi

What's wild to me is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are basically computer illiterate by and large. The reason old computers were fun is because all the hip young millennials loved them for everything. That has become much less the case as the younger generations do everything with a phone/tablet/or console. Just surfing the internet for my generation was a chore that is hard for the younger generations to understand.

dylan604 2y ago
> What's wild to me is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are basically computer illiterate by and large. That's something I've realized as well. There was a time where typing was something more and more people could do, but now nobody cares/needs to learn how. The number of households that had at least one computer was something I thought would get to pretty much everyone, but now there are more and more people with the only compute device being their phone. Owning a computer seems to be an age indicator like wearing tube socks.
- fjjjrjj 2y ago
  I have a teenager and a elementary schooler and both enjoy PC gaming. The elder is interested in game development through his love of Roblox. I hope to help him get started with an IDE for lua, git, and a LLM and turn him loose on it.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > and a LLM this makes me nervous for proper learning of anything in the future. when the first step to learning is an LLM vs learning the basics with a good understanding and then moving to the "advanced" tools, I don't think this is really learning
    - sejje 2y ago
      The llm can teach you the basics. It's really good at it. You can't see if it's really learning or not until you see how it's used.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        so now you're implying that everyone that has ever learned anything before an LLM could not see if they were really learning or not? the overly zealous pro-LLM crowd makes me sad that they cannot admit how ridiculous they sound to rationally thinking people
        pqtyw 2y ago
        To me it seemed like the comment said the complete opposite of what you are implying? i.e. "llm can teach you the basics" BUT "You can't see if it's really learning or not until you see how it's used."
        sejje 2y ago
        No, not at all. I'm saying you can't judge some learning process that you're not even witnessing. Maybe you haven't used an LLM to learn something; maybe you just let it write your code. Not everyone does that. When folks like you narrow arguments "everyone can only use the LLM exactly like I have, and if you do that, it really hinders your learning"---who sounds irrational?
        dylan604 2y ago
        the joke's on you then as I've never used an LLM. i see the results of other people using them, and i'm not impressed. so who's irrational now by assuming something completely off base?
        sejje 2y ago
        You're vigorously defending your opinion on LLMs after never having used one? I think you've made my point
        dylan604 2y ago
        just because I don't use it doesn't mean I'm ignorant on the subject.
    - fjjjrjj 2y ago
      It can teach him game development better than I can. I have zero experience with it but I can teach him about the software development lifecycle, version control, and whatnot. If it sparks his interest he has a lot of life ahead of him to go deeper with it.
    - matwood 2y ago
      > this makes me nervous for proper learning of anything in the future I don't really understand this fear, particularly now with the reasoning models that explain why they did something.
      - pqtyw 2y ago
        Nobody is going to read and the "thoughts" they do output are hardly every particularly coherent or insightful (Deepseak is just sem-unhinged continuous rambling and Open AI of course hides most of the reasoning). Even if the steps/explanations were actually useful and insightful, though IMHO that's not remotely the same thing as figuring out the steps on your own.
        matwood 2y ago
        When chatGPT corrects my writing, the explanations are actually quite helpful. > IMHO that's not remotely the same thing as figuring out the steps on your own. This is true with pretty much anything, but it doesn't mean we should ignore tools that can do those steps for you.
        pqtyw 2y ago
        Presumably you knew how to write before ChatGPT was a thing, though? > we should ignore Never implied anything of the sort. But it can be a bit like kids not learning basic math and skipping straight to using calculators for everything just 10x worse.
      - nottorp 2y ago
        Well I just used a LLM to write a systemd unit for me. One attempt kinda works but it doesn't do what I wanted, the other would do what I wanted if it worked at all. Every line is explained in detail. They just don't help :)
  - Cyphase 2y ago
    You're on HN leaving this comment. I don't think the children of HN commenters are representative. :)
bsimpson 2y ago
You might be off by a generation. I was born in 86. My dad got the first Mac as he was graduating from college. I think I was 13 when the iMac G3 and the X Public Beta came out. Computers were well entrenched in my childhood, but it was the people who were adults when we were children that designed the fun ones.
- cogman10 2y ago
  You're a millennial :) I agree that adults designed our fun computers but those were adults that specialized in making those devices. If you looked at the average Gen Xer of the era you'd find they have very little interaction with computers. It was our generation who had computers in the home as children. Very few of prior generations had that privilege.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Gen Z also had PCs in the home as children.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      Had PCs, yes. Used PCs? IDK. Gen Z starts around 95. The ipod touch came out in 07. That means that the hot device to get came out when the oldest Gen Z turned 12. I'd grant that older genz were probably more exposed, but that exposure and familiarity pretty rapidly decreases as they age.
      - hot_gril 2y ago
        So I was born in '96. We actually used our elementary school PCs less than younger years because not as much work had been digitized yet, plus it wasn't a given that every student had internet at home. iPhones became hot 2009-2012 when I was in middle school (gen1 iPhone/iPt was too early), but everyone needed a PC at home for schoolwork, same in high school. We were fortunate enough to have a computer science class, which literally 10X'd in popularity the year after I took it. Later years also used laptops more for non-CS stuff. PC games were mainstream too, so it wasn't just work. Really hit me when the school jocks started joining my Minecraft server. Again I think consoles were actually more popular in earlier times, cause PCs couldn't run as many good games until the 2010s. I can't speak as much for the younger side of gen Z. I assume CS is still more popular among them, there are more PC video gamers than before, and there are Chromebooks if you count that. Not sure if iPads ever actually replaced PCs, besides it was always in Apple's interest not to cannibalize the Mac line.
hot_gril 2y ago
I don't know if you're thinking about all the millennials or just a few. PCs weren't as common in the early 90s.
- cogman10 2y ago
  I know there's computer illiterate millennials. If you could turn it into a literacy ranking or percentage my argument is that more millennials (by a large margin) are computer literate than any other generation.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    I think that's gen Z. For the younger half, you might have to decide whether or not a Chromebook qualifies as a PC, but idk if it even matters because Mac/Windows PCs are still necessary for work or used for games.
    - nicksergeant 2y ago
      I could be mistaken but I think parent is referring to computer literacy as the interest in tinkering with and/or programming computers, not just using them to write school papers. I too am quite fearful of the fact that I know zero kids under the age of 15 who have any interest in learning how computers work, despite being completely surrounded by them since age 8 or 9 (via school-issued Chromebooks).
      - hot_gril 2y ago
        I'm 28, and when I was 15, I didn't know anyone tinkering with computers either. Besides myself, and the other kids at school didn't take kindly to that. Now I do know a lot of kids under 15 doing computer tinkering, usually gaming PCs. If anything, I'm worried that they do it too much.
- JeremyHerrman 2y ago
  Sure, computers grew in popularity throughout the 90s but I wouldn't call them uncommon in the early 90s - they were all over the place especially in schools. My kindergarten classroom had an Apple II in 1989. Our first grade classroom had old IBM PCs. My parents bought our first computer in '94 and we were one of the later families to have one (these were actual middle class families).
mrweasel 2y ago
> What's wild to me is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are basically computer illiterate by and large. That really depends on how you define computer literate, because I'm seeing some incredible work being done by the younger generations, both for modern computers, but also for the machines of my youth in the 80s and 90s. Most of the Gen Z I previously taught might not know Excel, Word or even Windows, but they certainly knows how to use and abuse Google Docs and Sheets. As for deep knowledge on the inner workings of a PC, I don't think they are worse of then previous generations. You have a tiny group of absolute geniuses, a small, but larger group of above average who will become future engineers and developers, then an tiny group of people who can operate modern Windows applications will insane skill levels, and finally the reset, who can sort of get by.
- cogman10 2y ago
  > I'm seeing some incredible work being done by the younger generations, both for modern computers, but also for the machines of my youth in the 80s and 90s. I don't dispute that. The younger generations have a huge leg up in terms of available educational resources. My point is more that the average millennial will be computer literate while the average genz or alpha will not. By literate I mean having a basic understanding of how computers work. Like what a file is, how to find them, what a hard drive or mouse is and does. How to type. I didn't doubt that the younger Gens will likely run circles around me in terms of programming. Similar to how there were really smart computer literate gen x and boomers.
pjmlp 2y ago
Yes, as Gen X still into gaming, it is kind of interesting seeing all those remarks about the rise of PC gaming, PC gaming, alongside 8 and 16 bit home computers were all that we had, in Europe almost no one was that into consoles. They existed surely, with SEGA on the forefront, but not something most households cared about. Home computers gaming was what the majority of us had.

dylan604 2y ago

> What's wild to me is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are basically computer illiterate by and large. That's something I've realized as well. There was a time where typing was something more and more people could do, but now nobody cares/needs to learn how. The number of households that had at least one computer was something I thought would get to pretty much everyone, but now there are more and more people with the only compute device being their phone. Owning a computer seems to be an age indicator like wearing tube socks.

fjjjrjj 2y ago
I have a teenager and a elementary schooler and both enjoy PC gaming. The elder is interested in game development through his love of Roblox. I hope to help him get started with an IDE for lua, git, and a LLM and turn him loose on it.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > and a LLM this makes me nervous for proper learning of anything in the future. when the first step to learning is an LLM vs learning the basics with a good understanding and then moving to the "advanced" tools, I don't think this is really learning
  - sejje 2y ago
    The llm can teach you the basics. It's really good at it. You can't see if it's really learning or not until you see how it's used.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      so now you're implying that everyone that has ever learned anything before an LLM could not see if they were really learning or not? the overly zealous pro-LLM crowd makes me sad that they cannot admit how ridiculous they sound to rationally thinking people
      - pqtyw 2y ago
        To me it seemed like the comment said the complete opposite of what you are implying? i.e. "llm can teach you the basics" BUT "You can't see if it's really learning or not until you see how it's used."
      - sejje 2y ago
        No, not at all. I'm saying you can't judge some learning process that you're not even witnessing. Maybe you haven't used an LLM to learn something; maybe you just let it write your code. Not everyone does that. When folks like you narrow arguments "everyone can only use the LLM exactly like I have, and if you do that, it really hinders your learning"---who sounds irrational?
        dylan604 2y ago
        the joke's on you then as I've never used an LLM. i see the results of other people using them, and i'm not impressed. so who's irrational now by assuming something completely off base?
        sejje 2y ago
        You're vigorously defending your opinion on LLMs after never having used one? I think you've made my point
        dylan604 2y ago
        just because I don't use it doesn't mean I'm ignorant on the subject.
  - fjjjrjj 2y ago
    It can teach him game development better than I can. I have zero experience with it but I can teach him about the software development lifecycle, version control, and whatnot. If it sparks his interest he has a lot of life ahead of him to go deeper with it.
  - matwood 2y ago
    > this makes me nervous for proper learning of anything in the future I don't really understand this fear, particularly now with the reasoning models that explain why they did something.
    - pqtyw 2y ago
      Nobody is going to read and the "thoughts" they do output are hardly every particularly coherent or insightful (Deepseak is just sem-unhinged continuous rambling and Open AI of course hides most of the reasoning). Even if the steps/explanations were actually useful and insightful, though IMHO that's not remotely the same thing as figuring out the steps on your own.
      - matwood 2y ago
        When chatGPT corrects my writing, the explanations are actually quite helpful. > IMHO that's not remotely the same thing as figuring out the steps on your own. This is true with pretty much anything, but it doesn't mean we should ignore tools that can do those steps for you.
        pqtyw 2y ago
        Presumably you knew how to write before ChatGPT was a thing, though? > we should ignore Never implied anything of the sort. But it can be a bit like kids not learning basic math and skipping straight to using calculators for everything just 10x worse.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Well I just used a LLM to write a systemd unit for me. One attempt kinda works but it doesn't do what I wanted, the other would do what I wanted if it worked at all. Every line is explained in detail. They just don't help :)
- Cyphase 2y ago
  You're on HN leaving this comment. I don't think the children of HN commenters are representative. :)

bsimpson 2y ago

You might be off by a generation. I was born in 86. My dad got the first Mac as he was graduating from college. I think I was 13 when the iMac G3 and the X Public Beta came out. Computers were well entrenched in my childhood, but it was the people who were adults when we were children that designed the fun ones.

cogman10 2y ago
You're a millennial :) I agree that adults designed our fun computers but those were adults that specialized in making those devices. If you looked at the average Gen Xer of the era you'd find they have very little interaction with computers. It was our generation who had computers in the home as children. Very few of prior generations had that privilege.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Gen Z also had PCs in the home as children.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Had PCs, yes. Used PCs? IDK. Gen Z starts around 95. The ipod touch came out in 07. That means that the hot device to get came out when the oldest Gen Z turned 12. I'd grant that older genz were probably more exposed, but that exposure and familiarity pretty rapidly decreases as they age.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      So I was born in '96. We actually used our elementary school PCs less than younger years because not as much work had been digitized yet, plus it wasn't a given that every student had internet at home. iPhones became hot 2009-2012 when I was in middle school (gen1 iPhone/iPt was too early), but everyone needed a PC at home for schoolwork, same in high school. We were fortunate enough to have a computer science class, which literally 10X'd in popularity the year after I took it. Later years also used laptops more for non-CS stuff. PC games were mainstream too, so it wasn't just work. Really hit me when the school jocks started joining my Minecraft server. Again I think consoles were actually more popular in earlier times, cause PCs couldn't run as many good games until the 2010s. I can't speak as much for the younger side of gen Z. I assume CS is still more popular among them, there are more PC video gamers than before, and there are Chromebooks if you count that. Not sure if iPads ever actually replaced PCs, besides it was always in Apple's interest not to cannibalize the Mac line.

hot_gril 2y ago

I don't know if you're thinking about all the millennials or just a few. PCs weren't as common in the early 90s.

cogman10 2y ago
I know there's computer illiterate millennials. If you could turn it into a literacy ranking or percentage my argument is that more millennials (by a large margin) are computer literate than any other generation.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  I think that's gen Z. For the younger half, you might have to decide whether or not a Chromebook qualifies as a PC, but idk if it even matters because Mac/Windows PCs are still necessary for work or used for games.
  - nicksergeant 2y ago
    I could be mistaken but I think parent is referring to computer literacy as the interest in tinkering with and/or programming computers, not just using them to write school papers. I too am quite fearful of the fact that I know zero kids under the age of 15 who have any interest in learning how computers work, despite being completely surrounded by them since age 8 or 9 (via school-issued Chromebooks).
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      I'm 28, and when I was 15, I didn't know anyone tinkering with computers either. Besides myself, and the other kids at school didn't take kindly to that. Now I do know a lot of kids under 15 doing computer tinkering, usually gaming PCs. If anything, I'm worried that they do it too much.
JeremyHerrman 2y ago
Sure, computers grew in popularity throughout the 90s but I wouldn't call them uncommon in the early 90s - they were all over the place especially in schools. My kindergarten classroom had an Apple II in 1989. Our first grade classroom had old IBM PCs. My parents bought our first computer in '94 and we were one of the later families to have one (these were actual middle class families).

mrweasel 2y ago

> What's wild to me is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are basically computer illiterate by and large. That really depends on how you define computer literate, because I'm seeing some incredible work being done by the younger generations, both for modern computers, but also for the machines of my youth in the 80s and 90s. Most of the Gen Z I previously taught might not know Excel, Word or even Windows, but they certainly knows how to use and abuse Google Docs and Sheets. As for deep knowledge on the inner workings of a PC, I don't think they are worse of then previous generations. You have a tiny group of absolute geniuses, a small, but larger group of above average who will become future engineers and developers, then an tiny group of people who can operate modern Windows applications will insane skill levels, and finally the reset, who can sort of get by.

cogman10 2y ago
> I'm seeing some incredible work being done by the younger generations, both for modern computers, but also for the machines of my youth in the 80s and 90s. I don't dispute that. The younger generations have a huge leg up in terms of available educational resources. My point is more that the average millennial will be computer literate while the average genz or alpha will not. By literate I mean having a basic understanding of how computers work. Like what a file is, how to find them, what a hard drive or mouse is and does. How to type. I didn't doubt that the younger Gens will likely run circles around me in terms of programming. Similar to how there were really smart computer literate gen x and boomers.

pjmlp 2y ago

Yes, as Gen X still into gaming, it is kind of interesting seeing all those remarks about the rise of PC gaming, PC gaming, alongside 8 and 16 bit home computers were all that we had, in Europe almost no one was that into consoles. They existed surely, with SEGA on the forefront, but not something most households cared about. Home computers gaming was what the majority of us had.