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Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

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Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#101

Post by egypturnash »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45
tmpz22 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your summary I think the OP brushes against another point I think is really important: a large number of users do not care to optimize their own experience for ~some~ reason, even when the lack of optimization has a significant opportunity cost. As software developers we pull our hair out trying to architect around this issue... and we usually fail hard. I could guess an infinity of potential cause…

> a large number of users do not care to optimize their own experience for ~some~ reason, even when the lack of optimization has a significant opportunity cost. A large proportion of people don’t even optimize their bedroom, and probably a huge proportion for teens and young adults. It’s lack of caring about long term benefits and focusing on short term benefits. Or laziness. Or procrastination. Or whatever you want…

How exactly does one optimize their bedroom anyway?

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#102

Post by IIAOPSW »

RandomGuyDTB wrote: post #88

I hate that this is true. I've posted here before on the same topic[1] and although we know a lot of stuff about computers, we don't really grok them. Or at least, not a lot of my peers do, and I'm sorely missing some info myself. My friends just don't care. At all. About anything related to lower level computing. I explain things and they ignore me, even when I try to make it relatable (without being patronizing). I…

Bad news kid. As you grow up adults are on average just as averse to understanding anything on a deeper level, and even worse they get to vote and it counts the same as yours. Best thing you can do is self select into a profession where you're surrounded by people who do care and eventually you can forget what the average person is truly like.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#103

Post by red2awn »

na85 wrote: post #93
benibela wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally hacking. Lots of shareware games wanted a registration code, but after changing the right offsets in the hex editor you could play them without registration code... People have no clue about computers, till they can manually convert between assembly and hex code

Actually, real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

I thought they use butterflies.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#104

Post by TeaDude »

You want to know who's fault this is? Yours, whoever wrote this article.

It constantly complains that modern teens barely touch anything underneath the surface in tech but ironically completely smears over any of the underlying issues.

Let's have a think...

Do any of the mainstream tech publications cover low level programming? No.

Are any low level computer skills taught in college or other mainstream programming courses? No.

Do big tech companies give a thought to the quality of their software as long they can foist it on people? No. (Although you could probably argue that that isn't a new phenomena)

Garbage in, garbage out. Someone failed to protect the tech industry and it isn't these teens' fault that real programming is completely obscured. The best chance they have is getting into retro games so they can stumble across David Murray or Clint Basinger or the like.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#106

Post by TimTheTinker »

jimmux wrote: post #87
non-entity wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I normally roll my eyes at "wrong generation" stuff, but holy shit it seems like it would have been really fun to have grown up or even worked in the industry during the golden age.

As someone who was messing around with computers back then, I'm jealous of kids who are getting serious about this stuff now. I was lucky to have a computer at all to learn on. If I did anything remotely hacky, I would be warned about breaking an expensive and irreplaceable piece of equipment. There was no help or documentation. No Internet to download the most basic of resources. If I didn't stumble upon HyperCard a…

Completely agree. Kids these days ... :)

I had my own Windows 95 PC (120 MHz Packard Bell) that I saved up lawn money for (my dad agreed to pay 50% for my first computer). I wanted to learn programming, but found the C and C++ books my parents bought me to be really dense. So I taught myself QBasic (and TI Basic on my TI-83). If I had had anything like the youtube videos, online tutorials, blogs, Stack Overflow, etc. that modern folks have, high school would have been completely different.

I have a friend who taught himself the DOS prompt on his parents' computer when he was in early high school. He had no access to any materials (this was before the internet was available); he literally typed every possible combination of letters and discovered the commands (dir, cls, move, del, ren, etc.) and tried to infer what they did.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#107

Post by wbl »

jimmux wrote: post #87
non-entity wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I normally roll my eyes at "wrong generation" stuff, but holy shit it seems like it would have been really fun to have grown up or even worked in the industry during the golden age.

As someone who was messing around with computers back then, I'm jealous of kids who are getting serious about this stuff now. I was lucky to have a computer at all to learn on. If I did anything remotely hacky, I would be warned about breaking an expensive and irreplaceable piece of equipment. There was no help or documentation. No Internet to download the most basic of resources. If I didn't stumble upon HyperCard a…

Emacs existed back then, and it auto formatted on save.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#109

Post by hermitdev »

rc-5 wrote: post #32

Allow me to preface this by saying that I am, in fact, a teen, and absolutely do not represent the majority of teenagers. This post is a generalization and a subjective rant that absolutely doesn't hold up in real life. >>>When you explain what happens under the hood, they will ignore you. When you tell them what a certain setting probably does, they will ignore you. In my experience, although there may be some teena…

I'm old enough to be on the border of the millennial generation, but I certainly dont identify with it.

I grew up dialing into local BBS's because our ISP was a long distance phone call (hell, where I grew up, calling half of my classmates was a long distance phone call).

Through junior high/high school I was known as "the hacker" not because I was actually cracking system or anything, but merely because I knew how, and was comfortable with using a computer. I cut my teeth on DOS 3.0 on a 286 with a whopping 40 MB HD.

I once got suspended for a week because a teacher "saw me with a black screen", aka a DOS prompt, the week before the school network crash, and assumed it must be related (I actually had nothing to do with the crash, I merely knew the keyboard shortcut in WordPerfect 5.1 to temporarily exit to a DOS prompt - super hacker skills, right?).

Anyways, my parents and I didn't fight the suspension, because there was no evidence available to us that I didnt do it. My parents asked me point blank if I did it and I honestly replied no. Their response was: "well, youre going to learn how to". Thats how I got my first programming books.

Not that I needed the programming knowledge, but a year later I did own my school's network. More the social engineering route than anything. I got a copy of the remote access tool the sysadmin was using. I could remote in (no password required, this was the 90s, all I needed was the phone number, which was handily affixed to the modem). I just had to time it such that the network drive backup was complete, then I had sysadmin access (I reran the backup so he'd see the completed screen when he got in the morning). I forget exactly how many admin counts I had, but it was at least 5 in case one got discovered (this was all Novell Netware back in the day).

Admin access granted universal access. I could have changed grades (never needed to for myself and I didnt whore out my access). I could impersonate teachers over internal email and a precursor to IM.

Not super hacker skills. Mostly stumbling around and befriending the lab admin. At times, it did help that I could type faster than the admin.

Memories...

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#110

Post by joethebob »

tpmx wrote: post #3
zeku wrote: post #2

this is just a rant and not constructive.

An observation doesn't need to be constructive. I needs to be relevant and novel. This is a relevant and novel observation. The people seemingly feeling hurt by this - you do realize you're outliers, right?

This is relevant and novel? There's really nothing here that hasn't been true for at least the last 20 years. It usually one of the first things you learn after discovering any aspect of technology is how few people actually look under the hood.
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