564
submitted 1 year ago by jcrabapple@dmv.pub to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

My wife and I started talking about this after she had to help an old lady at the DMV figure out how to use her iPhone to scan a QR code. We're in our early 40s.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] grue@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

I'm an "Oregon Trail" older millennial, whose first computer was a Tandy 286 running DOS (and Tandy Deskmate GUI shell). My parents bought me the thing but had no idea how to use it themselves, so six?-year-old me had to figure it out entirely on my own. I had to understand things like IRQ conflicts, "high memory", the difference between CGA, EGA and VGA, and (to some extent) how to use the DOS command line just in order to get my games to work.

Without that formative experience, I would not have become the Linux-using, self-hosting, software engineer I am today.

Frankly, I fear for the zoomers. I'm currently trying to figure out how to give my own kids at least a taste of a similar experience, because the last thing I want is for them to be slaves to whatever "easy"-but-exploitative technology the FAANGs of the world are constantly trying to shove down the throats of everybody who doesn't know better.

[-] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I remember playing in the low moby. I think our generation benefited a bit in our understanding because we had to deal with "bad" tech. Finicky, difficult to use, you had to understand it because it made no effort to understand you. Me playing with a presario 486 back in the 90s and all of our computers after that seems to have led to a certain knack that I offhandedly refer to as "speaking Machine". You just develop an understanding of what a computer is likely trying to do, what individual steps it would need to complete in order to do that and which one of those steps fucked up based on what it did instead of what it was trying to do. As tech got better the level of understanding required to use it decreased. This is good overall, but it's gonna mean fewer low level hackers and that even people who build things on computers don't fundamentally understand how they do what they do because it's all abstracted away. I'm a java coder now but I'm also the only coder I know that has ever worked in assembly. Outside specialized embedded hardware applications, why would you bother?

[-] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m a java coder now but I’m also the only coder I know that has ever worked in assembly. Outside specialized embedded hardware applications, why would you bother?

What's really crazy is that even $1 microcontrollers are faster than that 486 these days, and I'm pretty sure some of them are capable of running Java themselves. I was going to say something like "you have to go really small, e.g. ATtiny, to find something you need to use C on," but nope, even those can (sort of) run Java!

Not to mention the fact that you can run an entire desktop OS much more sophisticated than Windows 95 was on a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero...

[-] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Memba when we named our loop variables shit like "i" to save space in the symbol table? Uphill, both ways, in 3 feet of snow?

this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
564 points (95.8% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26980 readers
472 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS