[WJW]

No, that person is just the only one in his family who knows how computers work. There's plenty of people in generations both older and younger that know too, just apparently not his parents or his kids. Some of the most impressive assembly written today is by people younger than 20. It'll be fine.

[mywittyname]

It's broadly true though, that younger people struggle with the fundamentals of computing, even if there exists specific examples of young people accomplishing exceptional feats.

We raised a generation of people on consumption-based computing devices, which means they don't develop the skills necessary to produce things using computers. Of course, we can teach these skills, but to do that, we must first acknowledge it's a skill which needs to be taught.

[CommieBobDole]

I agree; the situation "young people know all about computers" was maybe a twenty-five year phenomenon; before that, there weren't enough computers for it to be generally true, and at some point you no longer needed to know all about computers to successfully use a computer for the sorts of things the general population does.

[WJW]

"Young people know all about computers" was never true either. It was maybe true for people like you and me, the type of people who now frequent places like HN. But for the vast majority of people, computers were never all that interesting.

[StanislavPetrov]

>"Young people know all about computers" was never true either.

That's true, but only because not all young people owned or used computers. I was born in the mid 70s and got my first computer as a young child. Back then you had to "know all about computers" to use the computer and get it to function. These days, every kid grows up surrounded by computers, with a computer in their pocket, and very few have even an inkling of how they work.

Thus "young people who use computers know all about computers" used to be a true statement, but no longer is.

[WJW]

It wouldn't have been true even if all young people in our generation would have had all the access to computers they would've liked. Most people just don't like tinkering with technology and that's fine!

The whole argument is pretty dumb anyway. Just try replacing "computers" with any other technology and you see how weird it starts sounding.

- "People use roads every day but almost nobody even knows how to make asphalt from scratch these days."

- "People use electricity every day but almost nobody even knows the basic equations for electric generators."

- "Children these days use refrigerators only as consumers, they don't even understand the differences between HCFC and A3 type refrigerants..."

Computer programmers despairing about how few children understand computers has strong vibes from https://xkcd.com/2501/ IMO.

[Legend2440]

Most people in my generation didn't know the fundamentals of computing either. That's why I get paid the big bucks to make computers work for them.

[StanislavPetrov]

>Most people in my generation didn't know the fundamentals of computing either.

That's true of my generation as well, but computers weren't ubiquitous and used by everyone all the time for virtually everything.

[WJW]

When I look around at my generation it's all too noticeable that most of them are barely capable of using a computer for more than watching youtube either. And both generations older and younger than mine have generated exceptional programmers.

Whatever dictates if people are capable of creative work with computers, year of birth does not seem to be it.

[andai]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h8ElOpITBjQ

> It was a Minecraft convention. We had the game set up with a keyboard, and a controller. By the 2nd day we realized, none of the kids could use a keyboard. So on the 2nd day we set up two controllers instead.

> Then I noticed something else. We counted it. 50% of the kids would come up to the console, push the controller out of the way, and try to touch the screen.

[Hfuffzehn]

I never felt more violated than when a coworker 15 years younger than me started to touch my work laptop screen.

I mean, she was right, it turned out to be a touch screen, but really who does something like that?

[andai]

When I was growing up, my school had Macintosh Computers, and their displays were Soft and Squishy, and we'd spend long periods of time just squishing the displays to observe the satisfying visual effects that this would produce.