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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)

#191

Post by blaser-waffle »

tomc1985 wrote: post #100
porknubbins wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never change default settings like remapping keys on IDEs and things, of course I use plugins but I always learn the defaults because its way too much of a pain to re-customize every version between all my machines at work home and VMs, if I can even remember the settings.

Indeed. Younger me used to customize everything to taste. Custom toolbars, custom keybindings for videogames, custom command prompt, custom everything. Current me doesn't care so much that I ran my phone with the default ringtone and wallpaper for years. After years of setting up everything to perfect only have it wiped out by disk failures, OS reinstalls, tinkering, hacking, and bad luck (to say nothing of how many…

+1 Used to config the hell out of Conky and other desktop UI options on linux.

Now I DGAF. Like, I spend all day doing IT and arguing about configs, far less desire to deal with it at home. Doubly so with a dog/wife/kids/friends/etc.

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

#192

Post by kyuudou »

Izkata wrote: post #49

> Green text with a black background is the norm, right? No. Using green text on a black background is not only obnoxious but also hard to read. If at all the norm is white text on a black background or white on black. Hm. I use white-on-purple at work, and green-on-black at home. Anyone else use apparently-unusual terminal colors? *green-on-black with occasional red, was part of a rotating color set I used to use. T…

yellow-on-black usually

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

#193

Post by yoz-y »

trumbitta2 wrote: post #177
trumbitta2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not breaking it. If you can reinstall the OS, and it works afterwards, it's not broken.

Yeah, downvote at will. But those are the exact words I always tell to my 73yrs old mother, and they are never failed me nor her.

When you have deleted that one copy of a precious picture... yeah it’s broken.

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

#194

Post by yoz-y »

kdamica wrote: post #17

I think there's a point to be made here that proficiency with UI is often conflated with technical understanding by nontechnical people, but I'm not sure the point about teens is well-founded. Specifically, while it's probably true that teens don't understand IT, neither do the vast majority of adults. I'd love to see some data on this.

> Specifically, while it's probably true that teens don't understand IT, neither do the vast majority of adults.

I think that’s the point. The whole promise of “digital native” generation is false.

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

#195

Post by bashwizard »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #188
bashwizard wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember my dad being fed up with me asking "hey dad, can I play Woffenstone?" (yes, I pronounced it like that since I was a 11 year old kid from sweden back then) so he gave me the DOS 5.0 manual and said "here you go kiddo, you can play as much as you want when you've learned how to start the game by yourself). That's where it all started for me and I was always on the computer whenever I could until my dad got f…

Great story, thanks for sharing :) There was a Windows for Workgroups computer lab at my high school. They had a DOS-based login, but accessing the DOS prompt from Windows was disabled. At one point, someone figured out that the login screen could be bypassed by pressing Ctrl+Break; the teacher found out and disabled that particular keystroke. But after hours of experimenting, I figured out that Alt+3 sends an ASCII…

That also reminds me of when I regularly used to visit our local library after school (junior in high school at that time) which had these job terminals (win95 boxes connected to the internet through a fiber connection) for people to use when looking for jobs.

Apparently they disabled basically all keystrokes while the application ran so we could only use a trackball to navigate the job board web site and print.

I never figured out how to just enable keystrokes again so I just unplugged the power cord, booted up in safe mode and edited autoexec.bat and uncommented the line for the application to autorun on windows boot up and rebooted. Free fiber internet and a lot of IRC for weeks to come!

However one of the librarians came up to me one day and asked "aren't you a little too young to be looking for a job?" and I was just joking and replied "yeah well, it's rough times you know". She looked concern and then looked at the screen and said something like "What's your name? I don't think you're allowed to do that... I'm going to have to tell you to get up and leave now".

I was indefinitely banned from using the computers and job terminals.

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

#197

Post by snvzz »

yoz-y wrote: post #193
trumbitta2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, downvote at will. But those are the exact words I always tell to my 73yrs old mother, and they are never failed me nor her.

When you have deleted that one copy of a precious picture... yeah it’s broken.

When you have undeleted it from the trashcan or recovered it from the block device with e.g. photorec, then the picture is back and you've learned a few things.

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

#198

Post by csdreamer7 »

iudqnolq wrote: post #179
csdreamer7 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I am a dev that codes Ruby on Rails and Python apps with PostgreSQL (and MySQL a while ago). I was reviewing a book and just used a Libreoffice spreadsheet for vocab terms. One column for the word, one column for the description. Wrote a macro and made a button on the spreadsheet to sort the words for me. A lot easier than making a CRUD interface ontop of a Base database. If I want to add a third column, cate…

> A lot easier than making a CRUD interface ontop of a Base database. Making an interface for a few columns of a few hundred rows sounds like the classic NCIS hacker line "let me quickly code a GUI in Visual Basic to run that IP address check".

> Making an interface for a few columns of a few hundred rows sounds like the classic NCIS hacker line "let me quickly code a GUI in Visual Basic to run that IP address check".

I can understand that, but keep in mind; I add a new line at the end of the spreadsheet for every new vocab word that is highlighted by the book.

I had to look over to make sure I got everything so the words need to be sorted. So I had to select everything in the menu -> two clicks, then click sort->another two clicks. For every few words...

It was much easier just to make a button into the spreadsheet that does this for me. One click.

It was also a perfect excuse to learn about macros. If you ask 'what's the point?' for every fun little technology you learn about-you will become depressed fast.

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

#199

Post by filoleg »

tmpz22 wrote: post #42
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…

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…

I mean, I, personally, also have some aspects of my life that I do not care for optimizing, even if the opportunity cost is significant.

An example that should be relatable to a lot of people here is learning emacs. People who get over the steep learning curve argue that it is the best thing ever and how much more productive they can be with it. Considering how much time I spend writing code (both at work and at home), that would definitely net me a benefit. But I just don't care to put in all the work required to get over the learning curve, simply because the way I write my code now is good/productive enough to not care for putting that much effort into optimizing it much further (if the cost of doing so is as high as getting over the learning curve of emacs).

tl;dr: to answer your question in one sentence, people don't care for optimizing something if it takes some sort of a significant investment, as long as what they have now is "good enough".

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

#200

Post by yoz-y »

snvzz wrote: post #197
yoz-y wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have deleted that one copy of a precious picture... yeah it’s broken.

When you have undeleted it from the trashcan or recovered it from the block device with e.g. photorec, then the picture is back and you've learned a few things.

Been there, done that, and I wouldn't want to do it ever again or hoist it to anybody, especially if they don't work anywhere near the CS field.
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