Why are there so many graybeards in FOSS?
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I've noticed that a lot in newer users.
Even in technical fields, the users know how to use the software but they don't understand anything under that. A lot of people got into computer via smartphones where you are essentially locked out of anything below the application layer.
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Wow cool!
Yes it's one of the most cheapest and amazing chips but also not very known about, or so I feel.
I made a little webserver on it that polled a site I had, so that I could switch (ok, only a led but still) on and off both from the esp and the website. Quite capable little chip.
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No, it's recognizing that tinkering means different things now.
In the 80s and 90s, if you were learning computers you had no choice but to understand how the physical machine worked and how software interacted with it. Understanding the operating system, and scripting was required for essentially any task that wasn't in the narrow collection of tasks where there was commercial software. There was essentially one path (or a bunch of paths that were closely related to each other) for people interested in computers.
That just isn't the case now. There are more options available and many (most?) of them are built on top of software that abstracts away the underlying complexity. Now, a person can use technology and never need to understand how it works. Smartphones are an excellent example of this. People learn to use iOS or Android without ever knowing how it works, they deal with the abstractions instead of the underlying bits that were used to create it.
For example, If you want to play games, you press a button in Steam and it installs. If you want to stream your gaming session to millions of people, you install OBS and enter your Twitch credentials. You don't need to understand graphical pipelines, codecs, networking, load balancing, or worry about creating client-side applications for your users. Everything is already created for you.
There are more options available in technology and it is completely expected that people distribute themselves amongst those options.
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I really think it has led to a reduction in the rate at which otherwise average people wind up in tech because they like it, as opposed to for money.
In other words, the computing hobby has declined from its heyday in the 80's-early 00s. Most people who build their own PC now can do so with about 10 minutes of help from YouTube and tools like PCPartsPicker, which helps a lot with accessibility, but the trade off is that the people who get into computers now don't need to spend as much time on them to get into them. They don't need to build up as much foundational knowledge, so now that knowledge has become rarer, even within e.g. the indie PC gaming hobby.
You can literally make an entire video game without writing any code. This is phenomenal if you want to make games easily, but it also gives coding a level of inaccessibility even in the minds of people getting into making video games that didn't use to exist because they came as a package deal.
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And what is the problem with that?
I mean, it sounds as if that is a bad thing that people are dedicating their free time at the betterment of something that can be used freely by everyone, including you
If you want others (different color, sex, gender, race, abilities, sexual preferences) to have a bigger part of that pie, then have more of them jump in.
I am guessing that most of the greybeards are here doing this because they can, abs like it. Help others to he able to help out
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Greybeards can be found in lots of places, but definitely not on discord.
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But plenty of people still do learn the deeper stuff. Just because you can write a game without code doesn't mean everyone who makes games is doing it without code.
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Nobody here was arguing that they don't. It's just that computing as a hobby is far more niche than it used to be. Literally everyone who used a computer used to have to be able to troubleshoot issues on their own with nothing but a manual and the machine itself. If they didn't figure it out, they'd ask a friend who would teach them how to fix it in the future and they just had to remember or they were SOL. You don't have to do that anymore, so those kinds of skills are less common than they were for prior generations.
I'm not saying young people with those skills don't exist anymore. I know they do. I'm a senior software engineer and have mentored some of them. I'm trying to talk about the rate at which fundamental computer knowledge and troubleshooting skills are being acquired, not if they are at all.
Please, don't put words in my mouth.
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I'm perfectly comfortable with C, it's a neat, small, language. I actually understand the whole of the semantics (at least the POSIX ones). I also happen to speak x86 assembly quite fluently (as long as it's not SIMD noone speaks that fluently, last time I actually wrote assembly in earnest x87 was still relevant). The thing is though I'm more comfortable with Rust, even if I don't understand absolutely everything: Because it's less mental load. I don't need to worry about so many things at once, don't have to keep a thousand assumptions in mind that that pieces of code I'm not currently working on are making.
No, driving a unicycle instead of the metro doesn't make you a better commuter. It makes you a better unicycle driver.
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config.sys generation represent.
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I get that, I'm not saying differently, I'm just saying that it's not like the only reason people were learning lower level things was only to play games. Some people were just curious about it. Plenty of people are still learning those things because they're curious. The barrier to entry being lower doesn't mean there are less people who are curious about learning! If anything, it means that people who are curious but thought the barrier to entry was higher in the past have an easier time getting into the hobby now.
Do you think that the Arduino project has been a net negative for people curious about learning low level microcontroller stuff? It was created out of frustration by people learning it wanting it to be easier to begin to learn. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-making-of-arduino
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Extra Upvote
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because young devs are treating their careers as careers. nothing wrong with that.
us "greybeards" treat it as a hobby and a career.
IMO software development will be dead in 20 years when the "greybeards" retire and there's going to be a HUGE brain drain on older tech that the younger generation refuse to work on because it doesn't further their career.
think of it to something akin to doctors who heal for the pay and not to help people.
I solve problems with software because I seek the challenge. I haven't seen that kind of objective from younger engineers.
If I was between my 20s-40s right now I would be learning COBOL and FORTRAN. going to be a lot of demand in the next few years around that for US civil infrastructure.
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Nobody here was arguing that they don't.
The entire reason I even began commenting on this thread is because someone said this.
teens are not geeking around with computers, they are watching reels and scrolling recommendations and doing other bullshit
My entire argument the whole time has been that back in the day, plenty of kids weren't doing computing related things. Plenty were doing "other bullshit" back then. My point has been the same the entire time. Just because computing as a hobby has a lower barrier to entry doesn't mean that there are less people overall interested in learning more. You just keep repeating back to me that proportionally less people who use computers today really know them deeply. I've never said anything otherwise. I jist see no reason to believe that as a whole there are less people who want to know them on a deeper level.
You point out things like files being a difficult concept for younger people today because it's been abstracted away. My response to that would be merely knowing what a file is was never what we've been talking about. Of millennials, what percentage knows about files and how to save them? 99% or so? Just a guess, it doesn't really matter the exact number. Do you believe 99% of millennials are tech geniuses on the way to becoming "FOSS graybeards"? No! Of course not! Basic computer usage has always been a different skill set than what I've been talking about.
Unless you have some sort of data about the amount of young people going into things like computer science is substantially lower today than it was in the '80s then I see no reason to believe otherwise. We live in a golden age of cheap electronics and easily accessible information. The barrier to entry for curious people wanting to learn more about computers than having them act as basic machines that can make documents, edit pictures, and play games is arguably lower than ever.
The days of old required everyone to learn more to be able to use computers, but I don't believe this translated to more experienced people then than today overall, especially not more people willing to contribute back to the community back then than today.
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Yeah. Extremely good software engineers can easy demand $200/hour as a contractor and that's still considered low. They are essentially doing that much worth of work for free.
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A lot of FOSS development isn’t rich developers donating their free time, it’s paid developers who were hired by their company to work on an open source project the company deems crucial to their business.
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Why do young people pop into a community that has been around for decades and wonder why the old people who built it are still around?
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The problem the article highlights is not the considerable amount of "graybeards," but the lack of everyone else.
to have a bigger part of that pie, then have more of them jump in.
The problem is: how?
I personally enjoy working with open source projects because I like making code to help other people. But, apparently, that's not enough of an incentive for other people.
Or, of course, they don't have the time/resources
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And what is the problem with that?
You don’t think that’s a problem that most essential open source software is maintained by older people who will retire sooner than later?
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I feel like by the time Trump and elin and the project 2025 gang have finished having their way with the government there won't be any demand for COBOL or FORTRAN. It'll all have been burned down to the ground.
