memes

I’m an 80’s kid. We had to learn everything: MS-DOS, Windows, how to install OS’s and software, serial ports, etc. Nothing was easy or convenient. You had to LEARN how and why things worked if you wanted to run games and things.

My dad never used any of our actual PC’s. He wouldn’t know which way to hold the mouse, much less anything else. We tried to teach him, but he just couldn’t grasp any of the fundamentals.

But with an iPad? That’s easy. It just works. He can e-mail, do Facebook, watch YouTube or other streaming…

Point is: we made shit way too accessible and convenient. Kids never have to learn anything anymore. So they don’t. We literally had to teach interns the basics of working with a desktop; all they’ve ever used was an iPad and phone.

It also lead to the destruction of the old web. Back in the early to late ‘90’s, you had to be a nerd to use it. To WANT to use it even. But now that it’s so easy and convenient even my completely tech illiterate dad can get online, things have turned to shit. We never should’ve made it this convenient.

Don't know no C, only /dev/sda1.

I've worked in IT for most of my career. I've seen some shit. I'm on the older side of "millennial". Not old enough to be on the cusp, but almost immediate after. I have had computers as a part of my life since I was young enough to remember, starting with a 286/386 that my dad used at home.

One thing I've noticed is that most companies shit doesn't stink. What I mean by that is that all of them, to some extent, hide, cover up, or otherwise deny that their product has any issues whatsoever. I did a lot of VMware training back in the day, there were good reasons for that, but I won't get into it .. anyways, all of their training was about how it's supposed to work. There's zero material about what to do when it doesn't work like it is supposed to... Even "troubleshooting" courses are designed to help you fix the configuration of the system using only methods sanctioned by the company, because any fault or flaw in their product must be because you aren't using it right, or you simply don't know how.

I've known so many millennials, especially in the tech space, that had to fix their own problems because the product, and the company that made it, believes that their shit doesn't stink. There's nothing wrong with their product, you either don't know how to use it, or you aren't using it correctly,

Meanwhile, here in reality, all their shit sucks to all fuck, and their product is little more than hour garbage.

Yay?

Calm down they're like 16yrs old

I know a bunch of people who got into webdesign cuz of MySpace.

I run a Makerspace and teach technology to kids. I don't think they are getting worse, but the difference between the lowest and highest skilled is bigger than ever before.

Those who are interested, learn so fucking fast and so thoroughly, because they have things like YouTube tutorials and Discord chat groups with like-minded nerds to teach themselves. BUT at the same time, it's easier to just remain a consumer, and never gain any deeper knowledge.

I think curiosity and attention are quickly becoming the most important skills by far.

I'd say that technologically millennials really have it best over everyone else.

Us millennials had to figure out the technology as it evolved into what it is today we know how bad it really was before it got really good.

I remember back in high school around 2002 we got cable internet for the first time we had all of three megabytes download. That was tremendously fast.

Movies were in divx format and could be dled from peer to peer networks. Morpheus, zazaa, Ares.

Dang those were the days.

They get handed locked down chromebooks or iPads at schools. They’re only really exposed to a walled garden, and they also aren’t explicitly taught a lot of concepts that need to be taught (almost all MS/HS I’ve met have passwords which are just sliding their finger across the keyboard - it’s bewildering. I teach “correct horse battery staple.”)

You can’t learn much if you can’t install your own software. Learning is breaking things though, and most schools seem allergic to hiring competent tech teams/setting up sandboxed computer labs. Security concerns are huge - eg, if your kids school uses PowerSchool they probably got hacked this year - but when your teaching physics and can’t install MathLab or whatever…

There are still the little geeks that figure out how to get video game emulators going - Pokémon Emerald is probably more popular among middle schoolers today than it was in 2005.

I used to teach math in the local school. The kids had a great interest in 3D printing because I had a few fun items in my classroom that I had 3D printed. I decided to spend a couple of weeks teaching a bit of CAD through having the kids spend it designing a personalized key chain to print.

It took me 3 days of class time to teach them how to use a mouse.......They couldn't grasp the idea that a touch screen and CAD don't go together, you need that mouse to make it work. It quickly became apparent that things quickly became difficult for them if it doesn't have a touch screen.

And while some classes are always a bit better than others, there was always a noticeable number of them that struggled with using a mouse.

Late GenX (really, between X and Millennial): we expected everyone after us to understand tech. Nope.

Computer natives are millennials. In due time, millennials will be what cobol programmers are in the coding world.
"On you want your recycle bin emptied? Yeah, thats gonna cost you."

My ssd is sda (with a sda1 boot partition and an encrypted root partition). I may be in Gen Z but I also have Autism, granted I didnt grow up with a lot of technology but I always squeezed every ounce out of them. When I was 13 I installed Linux, by 16 I already knew how to use a terminal (and manage the entire system with it), today I would say im relatively good at basic IT and basic network management (although im struggling greatly at installing coreboot).

Conclusion: Gen Z/Alpha probrally wont be great at computers but there will probrally be many individuals who will be significantly more advanced at computers. I was watching YouTube and a found a video of a 15 year old installing Arch manually in less than 10 minutes on a Chromebook. So tbh I wouldn't be worried tbh (at least about this specifically).

92 here. My boys 10 and 8 have their own machines, they are told to Google it first before I come help.

"I'm not raising end users...get your shit together kid."

Love,

SysEngineer Dad.

I had a meeting with a young person who had to have the concept of a directory structure explained to them for a half hour...and they're in charge of designing a file browser. 🤦‍♂️

I don't think the exercise was even successful.

CD drives were too big so drives were developed that only took half a CD, which is shaped like a C.

"We set our sights and spent our nights waiting

For you

You, insatiable you

Mommy let you use her iPad, you were barely two

And it did all the things we designed it to do"

Bo Burnham's Welcome to the Internet (2021)