4 ms·

As a kid who was raised editing and tinkering memory blocks out of CONFIG.SYS, I've been watching this for a while when the GenZ-Mobile-Generation showed up and

As a kid who was raised editing and tinkering memory blocks out of CONFIG.SYS, I've been watching this for a while when the GenZ-Mobile-Generation showed up and was not able to do the darnest things. I see with terror in my heart that the downward ride isn't yet over.

jb1991 1y ago
The steepest part of the slope has just started.
anthk 1y ago
Gen-Z people without AI (AWS' downtime for sure put tons of vibe coders/vibe sysadmins in their place) will be doomed. Mark my words. I didn't grow by editing DOS config files, but I began with it in Elementary and I've got Debian Woody (later Sarge) in my late HS teen years. OFC I played with game emulators, settings, optimizations, a lot, and under GNU/Linux I even tweaked some BTTV drivers for some El Cheapo TV Tuner. The amount of thinkering these people had omitted because of smartphones and such it's huge.
- blooalien 1y ago
  > The amount of thinkering these people had omitted because of smartphones and such it's huge. On the other hand, I've met people in the Godot game engine community that have built entire games on Android devices using Godot (yes, actually used an Android phone and the Godot game engine to build a game; not simply exported an Android game from a PC), so that only proves to me that if someone's got that "hacker spirit", they'll find a way to indulge it, even if the only thing they've got to work with is a smart-phone (and a spare keyboard / mouse layin' around). Problem is that mentality isn't encouraged quite the way it used to be back in the early days of the tech industry. The advertising and entertainment industries have "optimized" the Internet for "engagement", but most definitely not for the betterment of humanity. You gotta have that drive to build and create things or you'll get sucked down the various total waste of life rabbit-holes provided by the brain-sucky industries.
closewith 1y ago
Can you grow your own food? Treat your own injuries? Build your own shelter? Repair your own appliances? If not, you're already much farther down this dependency funnel that you believe.
- DocTomoe 1y ago
  Matter of fact, I can, and have done, all of these things. Recreationally. The idea is not to be hypergeneralist. What I observe - subjectively - is that we are losing whole generations of what used to be the 'nerdy IT/ham-radio/electronics-folks'. Sure, there is a small remnants with the makerscene, but that's mostly older people (beginning in their late teens).d
- JohnFen 1y ago
  Yes, to all of the above. So can a lot of the people I know.
  - closewith 1y ago
    And many more can not, and all are more important skills than cursory knowledge of operating systems.
somenameforme 1y ago
And it's little brother, autoexec.bat! The thing I found most bemusing through all of this is people insisting that people growing up with tech would somehow have this deep intuitive understanding of it. It made no sense. Using tech doesn't somehow make you aware of how it works. If anything, the refined final product can end up hiding it from people. We all use elevators but know basically nothing about them -- hence the countless nonsense Hollywood scenes with a cut elevator cable (spoiler: you'd be fine). By contrast when they were first being introduced, every single person that rode on an elevator was probably quit well aware of the tension brake systems and other redundancies - because otherwise, stepping foot in one would feel insane. But when you grow up with them and take everything for granted, hey who cares - it works, yeah?
- account42 1y ago
  People growing up with personal computers did get that intuitive understanding for the most part. The problem is that zoomers and gen alpha are now growing up with idiot proofed appliances that hide all the details from them instead.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    I'd argue a bigger part is the endless entertainment. A big part of the reason I started tinkering with things is because I was bored, and I'm fairly certain that was a very common motivator. At Half Price Books I picked up a book on assembler and started writing my first code using debug.com simply because of boredom. In an era where I could have instead been watching endless entertaining videos on any subject imaginable, or playing literally free video games optimized for thousands of hours of entertainment? I'd certainly have never been bored, and I'm not sure I'd have ever even gotten into computers (or anything for that matter). Indeed a disproportionately large number of zoomers seem to have no skills whatsoever, and that's going to be a major issue for humanity moving forward.
huflungdung 1y ago
[dead]

jb1991 1y ago

The steepest part of the slope has just started.

anthk 1y ago

Gen-Z people without AI (AWS' downtime for sure put tons of vibe coders/vibe sysadmins in their place) will be doomed. Mark my words. I didn't grow by editing DOS config files, but I began with it in Elementary and I've got Debian Woody (later Sarge) in my late HS teen years. OFC I played with game emulators, settings, optimizations, a lot, and under GNU/Linux I even tweaked some BTTV drivers for some El Cheapo TV Tuner. The amount of thinkering these people had omitted because of smartphones and such it's huge.

blooalien 1y ago
> The amount of thinkering these people had omitted because of smartphones and such it's huge. On the other hand, I've met people in the Godot game engine community that have built entire games on Android devices using Godot (yes, actually used an Android phone and the Godot game engine to build a game; not simply exported an Android game from a PC), so that only proves to me that if someone's got that "hacker spirit", they'll find a way to indulge it, even if the only thing they've got to work with is a smart-phone (and a spare keyboard / mouse layin' around). Problem is that mentality isn't encouraged quite the way it used to be back in the early days of the tech industry. The advertising and entertainment industries have "optimized" the Internet for "engagement", but most definitely not for the betterment of humanity. You gotta have that drive to build and create things or you'll get sucked down the various total waste of life rabbit-holes provided by the brain-sucky industries.

closewith 1y ago

Can you grow your own food? Treat your own injuries? Build your own shelter? Repair your own appliances? If not, you're already much farther down this dependency funnel that you believe.

DocTomoe 1y ago
Matter of fact, I can, and have done, all of these things. Recreationally. The idea is not to be hypergeneralist. What I observe - subjectively - is that we are losing whole generations of what used to be the 'nerdy IT/ham-radio/electronics-folks'. Sure, there is a small remnants with the makerscene, but that's mostly older people (beginning in their late teens).d
JohnFen 1y ago
Yes, to all of the above. So can a lot of the people I know.
- closewith 1y ago
  And many more can not, and all are more important skills than cursory knowledge of operating systems.

somenameforme 1y ago

And it's little brother, autoexec.bat! The thing I found most bemusing through all of this is people insisting that people growing up with tech would somehow have this deep intuitive understanding of it. It made no sense. Using tech doesn't somehow make you aware of how it works. If anything, the refined final product can end up hiding it from people. We all use elevators but know basically nothing about them -- hence the countless nonsense Hollywood scenes with a cut elevator cable (spoiler: you'd be fine). By contrast when they were first being introduced, every single person that rode on an elevator was probably quit well aware of the tension brake systems and other redundancies - because otherwise, stepping foot in one would feel insane. But when you grow up with them and take everything for granted, hey who cares - it works, yeah?

account42 1y ago
People growing up with personal computers did get that intuitive understanding for the most part. The problem is that zoomers and gen alpha are now growing up with idiot proofed appliances that hide all the details from them instead.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  I'd argue a bigger part is the endless entertainment. A big part of the reason I started tinkering with things is because I was bored, and I'm fairly certain that was a very common motivator. At Half Price Books I picked up a book on assembler and started writing my first code using debug.com simply because of boredom. In an era where I could have instead been watching endless entertaining videos on any subject imaginable, or playing literally free video games optimized for thousands of hours of entertainment? I'd certainly have never been bored, and I'm not sure I'd have ever even gotten into computers (or anything for that matter). Indeed a disproportionately large number of zoomers seem to have no skills whatsoever, and that's going to be a major issue for humanity moving forward.

huflungdung 1y ago

[dead]