this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Yes. They don't even know where to find files during their college classes
Can confirm this. I teach a programming class and about two years ago my brain exploded when I was helping a student debug a problem said "o, you tried to reference the file but it's actually up one directory and inside another one so you'll need to include the full (relative) path"
The blank look of "what the hell are you talking about" threw me for a loop. So, then we talked about file systems for awhile...
I've done support for sysadmins and I've run into a lot of them who don't understand the concept of relative or absolute paths. A couple weeks ago I had to explain how password hashing works to people working for a huge aerospace company.
I think most people learn to use computers like they learn to use a car, in that they understand the rituals they need to perform to get it to do the thing they want. They lack understanding of what's going on under the hood so when something goes wrong they can't fall back on knowledge and figure out what went wrong, they have to learn an entirely new routine to fix it instead of learning the principles and thinking critically.
Adeptus Mechanicus Intensifies
I've been catching myself calling it the activation rune instead of the power button.
I've worked as a sysadmin for 4 years and was recently offered a position as IT security consultant, and I don't know how password hashing works. (Don't worry, I rejected the position)
Thank you for not becoming yet another turtle on a post.
Plus it wasn't even how the hashing works, just explaining how a system can check if a password is correct without decrypting the password. They're getting millions of my tax dollars to build this IT system for the military and they don't even understand that one-way hashes exist.
Are we sure this is zoomers being less tech literate, and not just being a common issue, but used in a way to shit on the next generation? I dealt with the same shit in highschool with other millennials, so this feels so much like those "Millennials are killing X" articles by out of touch boomers writing clickbait.
Working IT for close to 2 decades , I'm not convinced the users are getting dumber, as they've always been dumb af about technology. Maybe it's because I'm out of end user support and don't have to deal with modern stupidity, but talking to my support staff I don't hear anything that I haven't facepalms through my skull about before.
The rank-and-file "I'm not a computer person" users are more or less unchanged and you won't see much difference there.
What's happening is that you have this huge swathe of people who are technically "familiar with computers" but still have no idea how they work because the details are obfuscated or hidden in most modern systems.
You won't see the difference in support. You're most likely to see the difference in teaching, especially in areas that attract people who have an interest in technology.
Meanwhile, my interns at work, who are a couple years younger than me, though we all are gen z, who had the chance of using AI at college whereas I graduated before chatgpt was a thing four years ago:
Uh, sir, there's no internet. How am I supposed to complete the Jupiter notebook if I can't even remember how to code on my own.
Hey chatgpt, how do I use X formula in excel...
Where's copilot?
...index? Isn't that one of the fingers? Oh, database index? Dunno, ask chatgpt.
etc, etc
Tbf this happens to me sometimes when i have to use windows haha
But it makes sense. The more intuitive UIs became, the less incentive you have to understand what the PC actually does.
But like, is there studies about it? I didn't find anything on a cursory DuckDuckGo search, just anecdotal articles