Technology

It's not youth bad. It's that in the 80s and 90s, computers were fun and required a lot of tinkering. Nowadays they mostly work. They're boring.

People who tinkered learned stuff. Users just know how to use a couple applications.

Gen Z/Alpha are the new boomers. I teach hundreds of so called intellectual cream of the crop per year. It was bad before the pandemic, it's seriously concerning now. The youth has largely divorced from reasoning and are used to reason in simple inputs to simple output. I am genuinely scared.

Sure, sure, old man. Everything was better when you were young.

I'm 28.

There never was a majority of people who were into computers. It was always a minority. And I’d argue that nowadays there’s more developers because there’s simply more people with access to computers.

I've literally said that the kind of access to computers matters. In my childhood it was Windows 2000 (98SE when I wasn't intelligent or interested enough). In those greybeards' childhoods - I guess a greybeard is someone who didn't have a computer in their childhood, but with programmable calculators, or automatic devices (like sewing machines) manufactured then, it was easier to grasp the initial concepts.

Human brain is not a condom, it can't just fit something as messy and big even to use as today's desktop OS'es and general approaches and the Web. It will reject it and find other occupations. While in year 2005 the Web was more or less understandable, and desktop operating systems at least in UI\UX didn't complicate matters too much.

Some of them won’t like them, some will be neutral and some will be “geeking around”.

But the proportion will change in just the way I've described.

And having seen some code from people both older and younger, the younger ones are better (note that it’s my anecdotal evidence). And you at least can train the younger ones, while the “experienced” will argue with you and take energy out of your day.

Maybe that's because you are wrong and like people who bend under the pressure of your ignorance. Hypothetically, this is not an attack. Or maybe just those who don't argue, that's a social thing.

Also, of course, people whose experience has been formed in a different environment think differently, and their solutions might seem worse for someone preferring the current environment.

As you said, that's anecdotal.

I’m so tired of the stupid “when I was young, everything was better”. You know what else was exactly the same? The previous generation telling you how everything was better when they were young. Congrats, you’re them now.

Well, this would mean you're tired of your own mental masturbation because this is not what I said.

I'm talking more along the lines of everything coming to an end and this complexity growth being one of the mechanisms through which this industry will eventually crash. Analogous to, say, citizenship through service for Roman empire.

I think it's more a matter of the ideals of the times, Foss was created in the 80's, as I see it as an ideological child of the 70's, a period of time where progress, optimism and idealism about creating a better future and a better world probably peaked.
Of course there is also idealism today, but it's different, at least the way I see it, the sense of quick progress especially on the humanitarian side is gone, the decades of peace with Russia is broken, and climate change hangs as a threatening cloud above us, and the rise of China creates turbulence in the world order.
So although things maybe weren't actually better in the 80's, there are definitely aspects that look very attractive in hindsight.

But as I see it, the mentality for FOSS is now stronger than ever, because aside from idealism, it's proved itself to also be a pragmatically good choice in many situations. But all the original founders and enablers are of course old today.

And complaining about how "people today" use technology is stupid, because chances are we would have done the same had it been available to us when we were young.

Lol yeah that was some anecdotal evidence!

What's next, girls vs boys code? People wearing hats vs people not wearing hats code?

Manager material right there.

BTW if an old geek argues that your code design/decision is bad then you should probably listen. But that's what beginners don't do, they think they know it all...