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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)

#51

Post by VLM »

IT is about highly scaled standardized system level engineering of documented verifiable reliable processes in support of even more complicated business processes that theoretically make, or at least save, profit.

The article title is correct in that teens don't know anything about that. Most management personnel don't, either.

Although the article contents seem to be that teens are somewhat worse than average at manipulation of UIs. Given stereotypical teen performance at automobile operation, culinary skills, operating romantic relationships, and muscular coordination in general, I'm not sure why anyone is surprised.

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

#52

Post by tapland »

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 think you are missing where the author is coming from.

People knew how to use websites and applications in the early 2000s as well, but with the advent of home computers, WWW and smartphones there was a widespread belief that, by nature of being surrounded by tech, young people would automatically learn how it worked under the surface and possess an inherent fluency in IT.

That didn't happen. It's still people interested in tech actually learning the tech and your average high schooler doesn't graduate able to write drivers, create software or hand-code websites and web servers.

It was a belief in the coming of a tech-utopia where every young person would know those things. But it doesn't just come automatically. There has been a huge surge in usage, driven by increased accessibility, standardization and user interfaces that don't require prior knowledge.

A lot of the older generation (probably mostly the less tech savvy ones) still believe we are getting there and have at least somewhat gotten there. We really haven't.

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

#53

Post by Izkata »

p1necone wrote: post #41
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…

Thanks for this, I take everything written about teenagers from the perspective of anyone >~20 with a huge grain of salt, because I'm not old enough to forget yet how completely and utterly out of touch adults were about my generation of teenagers when I was younger.

The opening paragraph indicates the writer is a teen though.

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

#54

Post by the_jeremy »

Don't know how an unsubstantiated rant like this (from 2016, no less!) is trending, but I'll respond.

When I was a teen, I knew practically nothing about computers - I remember trying to use regedit to hack a server-side game because some friend told me to. I could type and play games and surf the internet, that was about it.

I wrote my first program in college, and I'm doing reasonably well in software (graduated 2017 with a SWE job at median wage for my area, job hopped for a 20% raise after a year, and just got put in for a promotion at my new job).

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

#55

Post by thrower123 »

There's no golden age when people used to know how to use computers. It's always been a small percentage that had any idea how things actually worked. You used to have to have that type of obsessive, systemizing kind of mind to work things at all, so most people just didn't. For every one of us futzing around with autoexec.bat, there were a dozen or more who didn't care to frig with systems where troubleshooting was more complicated than turning it on and off and blowing dust out of the cartridge.

Most people are not curious nor do they care to know things at that level of detail.

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

#56

Post by rc-5 »

tapland wrote: post #52
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 think you are missing where the author is coming from. People knew how to use websites and applications in the early 2000s as well, but with the advent of home computers, WWW and smartphones there was a widespread belief that, by nature of being surrounded by tech, young people would automatically learn how it worked under the surface and possess an inherent fluency in IT. That didn't happen. It's still people inte…

Right - of course, I don't really know the cultural background, having not been around when those expectations were developing.

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

#57

Post by Izkata »

Johnny555 wrote: post #24
gumby wrote: post #13

They don't know what their car's choke would have been, or what a dwell tach is. So? They can still drive. Not one in 100,000 could milk a cow. I write assembly code that runs in supervisory mode. My kid couldn't write assembly code to save his life, but just taught me a new algorithm I'd never seen before. And he could learn assembly if he wanted.

Not one in 100,000 could milk a cow. I know this wasn't your point, but I'll nitpick anyway since that number felt too low, so I checked, and the number seems like it should be closer to 1 in 200. There are 72M children [1] below the age of 18 in the USA today, so 1 in 100,000 would only be 720 and there's something like 40,000 dairy farms in the USA, and I'd bet every child on those farms older than 8 (probably youn…

Could even be higher. I learned to milk a cow on a visit to a farm in the 90s as a kid, but grew up in the suburbs. Probably wasn't very good at it, but I have done it before.

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

#58

Post by VLM »

Johnny555 wrote: post #24
gumby wrote: post #13

They don't know what their car's choke would have been, or what a dwell tach is. So? They can still drive. Not one in 100,000 could milk a cow. I write assembly code that runs in supervisory mode. My kid couldn't write assembly code to save his life, but just taught me a new algorithm I'd never seen before. And he could learn assembly if he wanted.

Not one in 100,000 could milk a cow. I know this wasn't your point, but I'll nitpick anyway since that number felt too low, so I checked, and the number seems like it should be closer to 1 in 200. There are 72M children [1] below the age of 18 in the USA today, so 1 in 100,000 would only be 720 and there's something like 40,000 dairy farms in the USA, and I'd bet every child on those farms older than 8 (probably youn…

4H has about 7 million members, all somewhat rural/outdoors in outlook and not all farm oriented, as a likely upper bound.

Maybe 3 million kids would be expected to milk a cow, so maybe 1 in 20.

In some states, nearly a million people per year visit the state fair and most would experience the "milk a cow" booth so essentially all kids above a relatively low socioeconomic level have made a pitiful attempt at milking a cow. Under a very broad and unassuming tent, perhaps a third of kids could be considered able to "manage to milk a cow".

My minimal experience in cow milking is its hard to fail completely as long as you're not kicked in the face, but it is the kind of skill where experience and intelligence could pay off. Which brings us back around to an obvious comparison with the general public experience of mass market GUI user interfaces, LOL.

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

#59

Post by vsareto »

>They most likely won’t care about the operation of their system

Frankly, I don't either. Most of the important know-how comes to servers or cloud service configurations. My personal and work computers just work, no thanks to my knowledge. Win10 is vastly better than all previous versions in terms of this. Even if I run into something, there's always Google/YouTube. I think most teens can handle Google.

You don't need to have this stuff memorized any more. That under-the-hood knowledge you're trying to get me to memorize? Just tell me what to search for and I'll go look it up if I want to learn about it. I can remember that search phrase easily. I'm not going to remember every detail you talk about.

When I can't google my way into 6 digit jobs, I'll start worrying. Until then, those under-the-hood people can rest easy knowing things are much more streamlined these days because of their work.

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

#60

Post by rc-5 »

outime wrote: post #46

When I had my first computer as a kid (~8yo) and no one to teach me about the inner workings, I still felt that I wanted to dig deep into it. As the years passed by and saw the evolution from dial-up to all-day-long available & fast connections, tons of material to learn online, videos on demand... I thought oh wow, the next generations are going to have so much IT knowledge very early! Turns out that today, in my hu…

This comment has somehow sparked an idea in me... I, too, dug into computers as a child (now a teen). But I got my first computer (a Chromebook) in 5th grade.

Perhaps not having computers (or tech in general) as a child causes an enlarged interest when given access to computers?

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