• Radioactive Butthole
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    1931 month ago

    Gen Z/A are good at using tech, but they don’t really know anything about how it works. I work in IT support and it can honestly be a tossup sometimes if the person who doesnt know how to clear their cache is a boomer or not.

    • metaStatic
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      1921 month ago

      if a 3 year old can use a smart phone it’s not because that child is a genius it’s because the phones designer was.

    • partial_accumen
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      641 month ago

      Oh no, does this mean Gen X are going to be the wisened graybeards that holds arcane knowledge and seemly executes feats of magic when related to technology?

      • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        771 month ago

        X and the millennials both had to deal with computers that were computers, it’s the people that grew up in the smart phone/tablet era that have no idea what to do in front of an actual computer…

        • @TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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          1 month ago

          My litmus test is: “Have you tried Linux?”

          Even if they just used a live cd for curiosity, it means they know enough about computers to grasp the concepts that make them versatile, and were exploring around the net enough to read about it.

          • ᴍᴜᴛɪʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴᴡᴀᴠᴇ
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            81 month ago

            So I’ve been in the DOS/Windows world for at least 30 years. I have never used Linux, but I can configure a Cisco server or switch and stack a rack. Yet I fail your test?

          • @ReputedlyDeplorable@sh.itjust.works
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            21 month ago

            Now I know I am relatively young (just making the cut off to be considered a Millennial). But my parents were very against allowing kids access to the internet but not ani-technology. As a result I was using a 1996 Toshiba satellite when I was 4yr for Scholastic Reader Rabbit preschool games, but didn’t have regular internet access until I was 15. So I am familiar with the eccentricities of Windows 95, this did help me at work once when we had to use some legacy software from the 90’s that would only run on Win 98. But anyway I only recently have started using Linux in Docker containers for testing environments.

      • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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        231 month ago

        Based on how often I have to explain very obvious error messages to ostensibly qualified system admins: Yes.

        (Though I insist I’m the oldest millennial and not Gen x)

      • @Zorque@lemmy.world
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        191 month ago

        Only the 10% or so that paid attention to “nerd stuff”.

        All the rest are, at best boomer level, at worst smug about being at boomer level.

      • Ech
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        1 month ago

        More like Millennials. Gen X may have been around for the duration of the silicon boom, but it was largely niche “nerd shit” when they were kids, and only became widely accessible/acceptable to them with the same changes that have left Gen A lacking basic computer skills. Millennials, though, grew up through the full development of PCs and the Internet and had to learn how to navigate them at their early stages, as well as keep up with the rapid changes. It of course still isn’t universal knowledge there, either, but anyone that used a computer regularly through the early 2000s is going to be levels above most people getting into it now.

        • @Redredme@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Tsss, calling me an old nerd on lemmy. You’re a nerd! You’re on Lemmy!

          But yes, i wildly, loudly concur woth most of this thread: my kids can’t be bothered with HOW something works. It just has to work. No interest at all in tcp, udp, whats a bit, byte why is everything in multiples of 8: that’s all nerd shit. And, indeed: my shit. Dad! You’re the nerd: fix this!

    • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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      371 month ago

      It’s honestly a toss up whether sysadmins know what the fuck they’re doing. I’m working on a deal now that’s hampered by the fact that a Linux sysadmin for a huge finserv company doesn’t know how to administer a Linux system.

      This is why the humanities are important: So you learn how to think about a problem and not just rely on someone writing down every goddamn keystroke for you.

        • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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          51 month ago

          People who think like you make my job a lot harder.

          How are you supposed to understand instructions when you read at a third grade level?

          How are you supposed to do research to understand an error message if you’ve never looked anything up before?

            • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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              1 month ago

              Except we’re not dealing with mathematicians. We’re dealing with sysadmins who must read well and quickly to do their job effectively.

              They need to comprehend complex technical documents. They need to break things down into principles so they can apply them in novel contexts. They need to understand what the words “could not connect on port 4242” mean.

              Except they don’t. They get me on the phone, throw their hands up in frustration, and have me push the buttons for them.

              Because they didn’t pay attention in their humanities classes.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Gen Z/A are good at using tech, but they don’t really know anything about how it works.

      Millennials don’t, either. A tiny fraction of a fraction had technical literacy 20 years ago and now they think they’re top shit because they can write simple CMD commands.

      All this jerking one another off is crazy. I work in the industry and I’m surrounded by people my own age who don’t know what Active Directory is much less Linux.

      • @Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        131 month ago

        Same as it ever was. The only thing that has changed is accessibility. All these discussions seem to miss that. Most people have not, do not, and will not ever care.

      • @Lostinthecroll@lemmy.world
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        101 month ago

        I guess I’m one of the fractions of a fraction. I remember back in the late 90s when that catastrophe of an OS called Windows ME was plaguing our society. Having to manually change registry keys just to make the damn thing recognize a sound card.

        It makes me sound old but, kids these days have no idea the kind of hell we went through. If/when I have kids I’m going to start them off with DOS 6 and gradually move them up to current OSes. They need to know the pain we went through.

        • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          t makes me sound old but, kids these days have no idea the kind of hell we went through

          I mean, whose motherboard still needs a sound card in this day and age? But then I could tell you about fiddling with the settings of an old dot matrix printer. I don’t think that qualifies me to set up a Kubernetes cluster or administer a data lake.

          The “you kids today” rants seen to miss how hyper specialized computer hardware and software has become. No, Gen A is going to magically intuit an Azure DevOps Pipeline from first principles. Setting that up feels like I’m working through a Master’s Thesis on arcane file types. People need to stop pretending that knowing a bit of Regex from middle school entitled them to talk shit to a guy ten years their junior struggling with a customized .yaml file.

        • @x4740N@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          In sorry but this really sounds like boomer-esque mindset

          Why should the younger generation have to go through the struggles of the older generation when those struggles are not relevant today

          I’m gen z myself and I’ve changed Windows registry settings to disable stuff like caudiolimiter and change a few other things but I only learned to do that out of necessity

          Things should not be forced on people unless they want to learn them, people will only learn things they are interested in

          Force them to learn something and they won’t bother actually learning it because they aren’t interested and it won’t stick

          This mindset is the same thing as passing down generational trauma to a a younger generation

      • Ech
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        31 month ago

        People don’t need to know how to write a program from scratch to have useful tech knowledge. Knowing basic keyboard shortcuts puts a person above the vast majority of other people in terms of tech literacy.