Why are there so many graybeards in FOSS?
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I, USE ARCH (btw)
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I think you missed my point, which is that everyone who used a computer back then (less of the overall population) had to at least dip their toes in learning how they worked back then. This meant that a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have gotten interested in computers found out that they really liked them and started going down the rabbit hole on their own from there.
Nowadays such entryways into the computing hobby are far less ubiquitous, you have to seek them out.
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Eh, if you're into computers, you'll find your way. My first "programming" adventures were writing batch/vb scripts and putting them in the startup folder and watching the teacher lose their shit when when their computer turned off after five seconds. Or watching all of the classroom open and close the CD drives 50 times when we were the first to have an IT class that day.
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Nowadays it's mostly college kids trying to add something to their resume. And it's all note taking apps
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And you'll be older tomorrow. There is no escape. Being a dick about it won't help.
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Nah, the kids I know learned C just fine. C is simple, C is all you need for writing kernel drivers, pointers are not that hard if you explain them well, it just feels really pedestrian compared to Python or Typescript.
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Given the person said they're 28, I'm actually older. And I decided to not be a dick about it and to not pretend that everything was better when I was young. Everything was different, sure. Some things were better, some were not. But I decided to not do the whole "back in my days" thing because I always found it stupid and luckily that didn't change with age.
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Me, thinking about the days of dial up:
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Yes totally. I mean there are the same people just with an age/experience gap.
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I feel that. I spend a lot of time doing stuff for myself (playing games, watching videos, and some doom scrolling), but I keep telling myself it's because it's inconsistent in frequency and duration.
But at the end of the day, it's largely an excuse. I contributed to Lemmy a bit when I switched, and I could totally find a few hours a week to help with something. I just don't, because it's always a tradeoff with other things I'd like to do, some of them also productive.
So I guess we'll see what I do. In the next 5 years, my kids will be transitioning to being more independent, and I'll have more and more time available. My current plan is to get more involved in FOSS, but we'll see if I actually do.
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Dzzzz rrrrr bidibidibippbip KRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...
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Time to program the ESP8266
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Hence the power of the shout "sudo rm -rf*"!
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Wait until you hear about space age technology!
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That's a looooot of assumptions and stale assumptions at that.
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I totally agree, but nobody is saying everyone that uses a computer is a tech wiz. I'm saying there are still plenty of people today interested in digging in deeper just like there were back then. Tech being more accessible today hasn't led to a decrease in such things, because the people the ease brought in wouldn't have dug in in the past.
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Hah. I was just playing a YT video of modem sounds for my son, after showing him some "history" videos about early PCs, BBS's, text adventure and early commodore* and PC gaming.
History? I lived it, son.
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FOSS RO DAH
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My wife actually used that for something she needed to be able to remote control a few years back. She tells me it an amazing chip.
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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.
