• Different_pie@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 days ago

    Anyone who dismisses an entire generation as lazy or stupid is, ironically, revealing their own ignorance. Even Socrates complained about the youth of his time, yet civilization kept moving forward. If every new generation were truly worse than the last, we’d have collapsed long ago. So no, you can’t generalize an entire generation as foolish—doing so only highlights your own lack of perspective.

  • Muffi@programming.dev
    0·
    7 days ago

    I run a Makerspace and teach technology to kids. I don’t think they are getting worse, but the difference between the lowest and highest skilled is bigger than ever before.

    Those who are interested, learn so fucking fast and so thoroughly, because they have things like YouTube tutorials and Discord chat groups with like-minded nerds to teach themselves. BUT at the same time, it’s easier to just remain a consumer, and never gain any deeper knowledge.

    I think curiosity and attention are quickly becoming the most important skills by far.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
      0·
      7 days ago

      Digital safety seems to have disappeared

      The internet is a scary place, you should treat it like a scary place

  • bluewing@lemm.ee
    0·
    7 days ago

    I used to teach math in the local school. The kids had a great interest in 3D printing because I had a few fun items in my classroom that I had 3D printed. I decided to spend a couple of weeks teaching a bit of CAD through having the kids spend it designing a personalized key chain to print.

    It took me 3 days of class time to teach them how to use a mouse…They couldn’t grasp the idea that a touch screen and CAD don’t go together, you need that mouse to make it work. It quickly became apparent that things quickly became difficult for them if it doesn’t have a touch screen.

    And while some classes are always a bit better than others, there was always a noticeable number of them that struggled with using a mouse.

    • lost_screwdriver@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      To be fair: I switched to Linux 6 years ago. I’m using a tiling windowmanager, a lot of custom scripts, a different keyboardlayout with six instead of two layers (great for writing greek math, and other symbols) and an enthusiastic emacs user. I know the my System in and out. As a CS end math student, I know a fair bit about a Computer. But when A sit in front of an ordinary windows PC, I am a little bit upset. I stumble a lot of times over the thought: “You don’t have a keyboard shortcut for this! You have to use the Mouse, to switch Windows or you have to click yourself trough a menu to change this setting. There are no man pages you can search with regex” I hate it!

      • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        It’s because Windows has to save its keyboard combinations for the important things, like opening a new LinkedIn tab.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
              0·
              6 days ago

              It was news to me. But then I haven’t used Windows more than trivially in years.

              Gives me even less of a reason now.

              • shastaxc@lemm.ee
                0·
                6 days ago

                I was being sarcastic. If a shortcut requires 5 buttons, it’s it really a shortcut? Press Win to open search and type link will probably also do the same thing

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I completely blame schools adopting ChromeOS for this generational failure.

    At least give them a functional OS god damn. People out here not knowing you can do more than access like 5 websites and apps with literally anything that has a microprocessor in it.

    • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
      0·
      7 days ago

      My school actually had Linux mint set up for everything. It even resetted every time you boot it, so you couldn’t do any real damage. The only reason we had this was, because one of our CS teachers was very good and actually cared. He is also the one who managed the entire IT infrastructure.

          • lonerangers1@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            7 days ago

            Mrchromebox made a replacement firmware for chromebooks so you can install other operating systems on them.

            • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
              0·
              6 days ago

              Intersting. He devinetively wasnt him. We also didnt had chromebooks. We had thinkpads and normal office PCs (all with the same configuration)

            • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
              0·
              7 days ago

              Nice! Hadn’t heard of this project. The old chromebooks are easy to find in e-waste lots, mostly from schools. Hardware’s not ancient. Presumably optimized for web services. Just a lot of broken screens and keyboards.

              But if you stack ‘em like server blades in a beowulf cluster you might have a decently power-efficient and scalable host for microservices, web apps, lemmy instances, whatever. With UPS for each node lol. Basically free.

              I dunno, could be a fun class project for the kids to learn on with a minimal budget?

  • Radioactive Butthole@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    7 days 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.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 days 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
        0·
        7 days 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
          0·
          7 days 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.

          • MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            7 days 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?

      • x4740N@lemm.ee
        0·
        7 days ago

        NYC = new york city

        This is a translation provided for free by me because this user has defualted to american defaultism

        To the person I’m replying to, THIS IS THE INTERNET, NOT america

        • raef@lemmy.world
          1·
          7 days ago

          If he’s from NYC, he knows what NYC means. If he’s not from there, it doesn’t matter anyway

    • metaStatic@kbin.earth
      0·
      7 days 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.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    This has been a worrying trend in education. Parents assumed kids just knew how tech worked so they stopped teaching things like typing, office, or how to use the basics. Now we have people graduating who know how to use iPads and Xboxes, but have no idea how to manage a file structure (many honestly just use “recent”), or make a PowerPoint, and a lot don’t know typing.