- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27501866
source: @[email protected]
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As an IT worker… it’s so depressing that our education systems don’t really train people for work. At all.
“sure, they grew up with technology, they’ll be fine”
They grew up in the age of the smartphone and apps. They never had to learn to understand technology.
I have to teach fresh college graduates how to navigate network folders. It’s wild.
Classic Lemmy Linux users forgetting that access to a PC and the knowledge to use it is a privilege not afforded to most unlike budget smartphones which cost less than the keyboard you own and are becoming more and more of a necessity than a trivial toy as it was when we first had them.
Lamenting generational failures is a pastime reserved for the old to soothe their egos. If you actually care, understand the systemic reasons why young people are less tech literate and take the steps to reach them.
access to a PC and the knowledge to use it is a privilege not afforded to most
Yes and no. Computers have never been cheaper, but back in the 90’s and 2000’s there was only The Computer :TM:. Now a computer is in your pocket, on a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop. You can get a PC for cheaper than a smartphone (beelink anyone?)
I don’t blame zoomers for not knowing proper desktop/laptop computer usage. You can do basically everything without them these days. But it is an objective fact that the consequence is lower computer literacy. Whether that’s a big deal or more like not knowing how to write cursive is up to you and largely depends on what job they plan on holding one day. This may comes as a shock to Lemmy users but in the 2020’s you can completely function without ever touching a mouse and keyboard.
So no, access is not necessarily a privilege unless we are talking about populations that already can’t access smart phones and tablets, in which case that’s a decades-old problem and not relevant. That’s just basic access to any computer device writ large, not a discussion about PC’s.
I bought a 2013 MacBook Air for $60 a year ago to take with me on a backpacking trip.
It is running the very latest release of EndeavourOS and runs it well. It can do video calls. Honestly, there is little it cannot do.
You can use it to learn to program C, C++, Rust, Python, Go, Java, C#, and F#. It runs Distrobox and Docker so you can learn about containers. I guess after using QEMU/KVM to learn about VMs. You can use it to run K3S. You can run Postman, RestAssured, and Selenium to learn about Web APIs and testing. It runs WASM. You can orchestrate AWS or Azure from it as it runs both Terraform and OpenTofu great. It can run a host of cybersecurity tools including BurpSuite. You can run both SQL and Document databases. You can use it to package your own software and contribute to Linux distro development. You can emulate older machines and even run digital design tools and PCB layout. Obviously it runs all the major modern web browsers and a couple different Office suites. It can even do basic video editing and run smaller LLMs. It can run Steam if you are happy with older games. I know it can do all these things because I have.
Without going on and on, I think you could use it to rotate a PDF.
It comes with keyboard, trackpad, screen, and networking built in. It takes up hardly any space. And it is considerably less expensive than most phones and tablets. Of course, there are many less expensive computers that would also do the trick if you cannot afford $60 and just want to learn.
I don’t think you can argue that basic computer skills are elitist. We are not talking F1 racing here.
Most people carry a smartphone more expensive than my all organs combined to be fair, at least in US.
Linux and technology in general is not that hard as long as you aren’t scared of clicking everything and messing around. And I say this as someone who didn’t have internet access until 2020.
I understand the reasons, but so many people I’ve had to deal with don’t seem to want to learn.
Bingo. I have noticed a huge downfall in curiosity and engagement with not only technology, but pretty much everything in the world. People just want to be spoon-fed and will fight you throw a hissy fit rather than just… learn or make an effort to figure things out on their own.
I used to be a part of a DIY repair space for tech and mechanics and left because around 2022 it went from fun to just… a bunch of lazy people showing up and whining that other people were not doing the work for them. And you’d explain it was a DIY space for people to self-learn and they would just give you this vague look and get angry and then complain that ‘I thought you were suppose to do it for me.’
I don’t know what it is, social media or phone addiction or what. It seems to be just as bad will millennials now as any other gen. People just… don’t want to try anymore at anything. And trying is the only way you properly learn anything.
Also, people don’t seem interesting in figuring tech stuff out, its so easy to just google an error message, and read what it says.
You say that yet we all know Google has gone to shit the last 2 years. Not to mention all the good forums are either shuttering or putting up motes so they can’t be scraped, which means they can’t be found. Discord has been a disaster for tech solution searching online.
I teach high school and it’s amazing to me how much these kids don’t know how to use a computer. They can click a button and get to tik-tok. They read the first answer the AI gives them. That’s it.
I keep telling them they should be better at computers than an old lady like me.
They read the first answer the AI gives them.
This is why Im terrified of my parents learning how to use ChatGPT.
My dad still falls for satire. It took us years to convince him the tabloids in supermarkets about Bigfoot weren’t real.
He’s not a smart guy. But He’s still my dad though.
It’s the 1% vs the working class, not generation vs generation.
Wrong thread
I am a zoomer, and this generation as a whole is a lot worse at technology.
Its not something that’s happened for no reason, smartphones become more popular and simple to use technology, and older people assuming these people will be good with tech as they grew up with it are big factors.
The 1% is causing a lot of problems, but this largely isn’t by them.
Don’t feel bad. Every generation thinks their tech is the peak of technology, older tech is slow and useless, new tech is fancy, dumbed down, and unnecessary.
Heck, I already got called ancient because I ran NSLOOKUP from the command line instead of going to a website and having their page run the command from a GUI.
But…its the same…never mind.
deleted by creator
I’ve long said that I believe Millennials, as a generational cohort, are the best at typing that ever has been and ever will be. We were the first generation where adults really recognized that we’d be using computers our entire lives and took steps to teach typing. But, so much more importantly than that, we socialized through typing. I had typing classes in school, sure, but I learned to type quickly on AIM and in chat rooms.
Earlier generations only really typed for business or school. Later generations socialize over phones, so they, too, only use a physical keyboard for school and business.
I guess I should amend this theory to include all tech literacy in general.
There wasn’t voice Chat in early games and you had to type fast to communicate and not die.
Exactly this
Early Starcraft got me from ~10 wpm to near 100. You had to type those messages fast before your base was invaded and you died. If I had been born either 5 years earlier or later I don’t think I’d be nearly as fast a typer as I am today.
that’s how I learned to touch type without “learning” It intentionally. never bothered using home keys but I can type at 100-ish WPM and 95% accuracy
Same… My left hand home keys are wasd because I truly learned to type playing Team Fortress Classic online and needing to communicate without any voice chat. All the classes I took in school for typing didn’t get me anywhere, but needing to warn the engineer in the flag room he had 2 incoming because I was down… That got me typing with gusto.
Honestly, these days with voice chat everywhere, I feel like I am kind of out of practice and probably have slowed down since I do more typing at work than at home.
I remember trying to type really fast with a controller a while ago when my mic broke.
Typing was taught to boomers and genx first dude. In fact, as a liminal i’d readily say i’ve had an arseload more typing “teaching” than you have - both keyboard and typewriter- and i’ll wager my mother in the age of typewriters had even more.
I think you’re missing my point. I’m not saying nobody ever was taught to type in earlier generations. I’m saying that millennials were the first where there was a widespread recognition that typing was a valuable skill EVERYONE needed to learn, regardless of your future life path. Of course there were people getting trained to type ever since the first keyboards were invented. I mean, there were people as long ago as the 1870s learning to type on the earliest mass-produced typewriters.
I’m talking about a generational cohort as a whole, not individual select cases.
And I’m also talking about the difference between typing being a skill you learn for school/work vs something you use for socialization.
I took typing class in high school. On a typewriter. Gen X. My mom was a trained stenographer in her younger years.
X here as well. But 78. So i got to take advantage of the digital age without having my teen stupidity immortalised on it. Truly the sweetest of spots.
I am a bit older but similar. My dad was an early adopter of computers even though he had zero idea how to use one.
The typewriter generation are probably faster overall because they don’t make mistakes.
Being able to delete any error makes you far less careful.
Sure, modern programs will autocorrect for you, but autocorrect to what?
Microsoft word fixing tiny mistakes like reversed i and e or other very common errors has made me an absurdly lazy typist.
Indeed. I joke that I can type 100 words per minute but that 32 of them are backspace.
Yeah, it was funny teaching my grandmother to use a computer… She couldn’t use a mouse, but she typed really fast!
I can type fast, but I have to hit the backspace really often.
As a Zoomer, I also had typing classes, but I learned how to type because I wanted to be able to quickly send messages in Minecraft when I was like 7 years old 🙃
I write a lot on my keyboard, and have been for a long time. But my left hand is not on SDF but on AWD because that’s the default hand position for gaming/shooters. 😬
Doesn’t stop me from typing fast or blind though. Otherwise I would have done something about it.
I didn’t teach my older zoomer kid to type. He learned on his own out of the necessity of chatting with friends in online games, played on his computer. He uses the first two fingers of both hands, and he’s faster than me, who learned in school and has been a touch-typist for 40 years.
I think we’re moving away from keyboard and mouse, anyway. It will be AR headsets with voice, eye tracking, and hand gestures for most use, and keyboards will be used only when direct input is needed.
To be fair, PDFs suck and the only software that handles them well is paid and proprietary
PDF gear is free (for now) and excellent
Libreoffice is pretty decent with PDFs imo
From my experience, not very much, at least for editing PDFs without fucking up the fonts
I guess
Do Adobe PDF things handle all Google fonts?
There’s one generation between boomers and zoomers? I’m pretty confident I know who it is you’re forgetting.
The Gen X erasure is real
Meh, whatever.
Gen X and Y
Gen X: the forgotten generation.
And nobody taught us shit, we know how to do stuff because we had to figure it out ourselves. That’s why they don’t notice us. But… whatever.
LOAD"*",8,1generationI would but i’m too busy blowing on my atari carts
X MARKS THE HIDDEN TREASURE
I was pretty worthless with computers at 16 too.
Now I’m almost 40 and I’m working In the industry and slowly getting worse again
The thing is most of us cant even rotate a pdf, but we do know how to learn it.
Load up Adobe Acrobat, like the button that looks like it will rotate the document.
I assume that’s the process. Never needed to do it but I have no doubt I’d be able to work it out
Please, no, have mercy. Anything but the ad invested bloated Adobe Acrobat.
“like the button” - not sure if typo or using “like” to mean “click”.
Like that button. Love the button. Gently caress the button.
like that smash button
truth
YES! being able to google (or read) goes a long way.
Guess me and my partner are exceptional zoomers? Them having a diploma in computer science and i am a software developer
Youth bad, hate youth
Haha funny
This is the same rhetoric the Boomers used to keep us down.
Every generation is smarter than the last, us millennials need to learn to cope without ageist propaganda.
IMHO, the tone is entirely different from “millennials are all worthless, lazy, whiny bitches” to “zoomers aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.”
For one, we millennials don’t think it’s totally true, and I think it’s more a point of pride, because we grew up learning technology as it grew with us, than shitting on another generation.
This was the deflection made when boomers did it too.
Congratulations, you have now become your parents.
I’m not a millenial, I’m a part of gen z.
A high amount of this generation is hopeless when it comes to tech. There is outliers and exceptions, but as a whole, tech literacy has gone down.
At the very least, your generation has the ability to eventually learn tech usage. Its not too late like it is for boomers.
I’ve had a not insignificant amount of people who don’t want to learn how to. Boomers can learn how to. I love showing old people how to use google lens.
That’s unfortunate. I used to work under a boomer boss who refused to let me teach him anything, instead whenever he was confused about something on his computer he’d just call me over. Drove me insane.
There will be people like that in every generation unfortunately.
I’m a millennial computer scientist
This is literally propaganda
This is the exact same as boomers thinking they are superior to millennials for knowing how to drive stick shift or write cursive.
But both cursive and manual stick shift (at least in the USA) are being used less and less, but computers are being used more, while literacy goes down.
I think it has to do with barrier of entry. Way back in the day, you had to be quite the hacker to operate a computer (say Amiga or ZX Spectrum). Then, with Windows XP (or 98), it became easier to operate one, but some tasks still required clever ways to solve. Fast forward to now, all you have to do is click one icon at the bottom bar, write what you want in the top bar, and you got a billion answers.
Most of the stuff I learned was because the path to successfully perform stuff required knowing lots of different stuff.
For context, first PC was Win 98 when I was 7, born 1996.
For a while I drove stick, wrote cursive with a fountain pen, and wore an analog mechanical watch, and that was only about 8 years ago.
I mean, its an apt analogy, but its more like people not being able to use the indicators or radio/heating system on a car.
Also, where I live every young person (at least, older than 12) can write cursive.
Is this some Acrobat functionality or something?
Off the top of my head, there’s pdfjam, pdftk and imagemagick (don’t forget the --dpi switch) who could probably do that, after reading the man pages. Or ghostscript’ gs, if you want to go in-depth.
But generally, just rotate the source material you’ve got the pdf from. That’s how it is intended.
I’ve used ghostscript a few times to reduce the quality of images within a pdf, so they wouldn’t be freezing my phone while reading. From ~80mb to 25mb
The folks at Corvus Belli could learn a thing or two about that when making the pdfs for their Warcrow game (the core rules pdf is 118MB for 60 pages)
I’ve trained a lot of 18-22 y/os in the last 10 years and they are fine. Let’s not become the boomers please…
I am a 30 yr old boomer in uni with 18 year olds and they are mostly fine. We are learning programming so the base qualification is to not dumb with computers. BUT My teacher friends are supporting OPs screencap where children do not understand computers at all. Theres plenty of tales of students being asked to log into a 15 minute online test and entire lesson is spent teaching them how to log in one by one. The issue is they click the biggest and flashiest button and quit once they discover it does not lead them where they want to go.
There is plenty more evidence that the next generation is unable to handle anything more complex than most popular apps on phone. Is it really surprising when everything has been designed to just work and be streamlined so you don’t have to troubleshoot anymore.
I legit have an acquaintance 15 years my junior regularly begging me for the the best torrent sites. And they’re pretty savvy for their generation
The issue is they click the biggest and flashiest button and quit once they discover it does not lead them where they want to go.
Anyone that ever pirated anything learns real quick that those are the buttons you avoid like the plague
I hope anyone who uses Google without an adblocker learns that very quick too.
Bait ads is the biggest attack vector to bring users to install malware.
They don’t learn, despite phone ads using the X button (the one supposed to close the ad) to open the fucking play store page
“30 yr old boomer” …not without a time machine.
Yeah, being dumb is hardware-agnostic. As some guy put it, “being stupid isn’t a big deal anymore; some of my best friends are stupid”.
It just stunlocks me a little bit as younger people have been around tech their whole life, unlike boomers, who were born before computers.Younger millennials down have had their exposure be primarily gardenwalled, locked down equipment. Tablets and smartphones and apps, oh my! The sort of thing that discourages casual exploration and experimentation.
They are fuckin’ skin masters though.
“been around tech their whole life” more like they have a locked down phone, locked down game console and MAYBE a desktop computer. It’s too rounded out and consumer friendly now, you never have to peek under the hood.
Idk, most likely its region/class dependant because I had dumb phones, some very early androids, and an Athlon 64 3000+ pc and I’d call myself a zoomer
edit: before that I had some ancient family pc but it’s only relevance is getting me entertained, didn’t tinker with it or anything. Also my old phone’s 4.4 android was my favorite because it was polished enough while still letting you do dumb shit with it
Boomers have been seeing changes in communications, culture, and technology as revolutionary as anything in the last 20 years, for their entire lives. Things didn’t start getting wild just recently. It has been a romp for the last 200 years.
Goomers and hoomers and foomers and schroomers are all alike and your generation is smarter.
Eh PDFs are just annoying to deal with. I could do this stuff the adobe acrobat when I had the paid version in school but I’m cheap and no longer have it. If I’m feeling desperate I’ll find the ghostscript command that does it otherwise I just do something horrible (for example scanning to jpeg rather than PDF creating an HTML page with both images and printing that to PDF)
From writing a limited amount of code to generate PDFs from scratch the standard is just cursed. It was using 7 bit ASCII until fairly recently resulting in an eighth of the document being wasted space. Also when they switched to PDFs being an open standard the specs went from something freely available on adobe’s web site to a challege of how to send 98 swiss francs to ISO to get access.
PDF24 has been my savior for anything pdf related. I learned about it and suddenly I no longer hate pdfs.
