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Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

> Kids today are growing up with iPads in their laps that teach them how to code.

No. They're growing up with iPads in their laps that teach them how not to code. Computing used to be creative perforce. Now the larger trend is to consumption - perforce.

There is a heartening smaller trend to creativity with Pi, Arduino etc...but it is tiny compared to the mainstream use of computers.

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Yes. I've noticed that trend too. A lot of today's teenagers spend most of the time on their phones to consume content and to communicate. Most of them use PC only for homework. I feel like the amount of time spent in front of the screen is the same, but not for the same purpose, and not the same screen. I was a teenager during the transition, the iPhone was released just on my generation's transition between primary and secondary education. Still, we all prefer laptops.

Naturally, since we spent bunch of time on PCs, we tried and explored many different things. I started learning HTML when I was 11 or 12, I don't remember precisely, but I discovered it accidentally. I found out about View source and how to save a web page (HTML), then I started playing with the code. This was enough to get me interested and I started learning HTML and later, programming. Today I am 23 and I work as a mobile developer. I heard a lot of similar stories, not just in programming, but for graphic design and other fields that use a computer as a tool.

The smartphone is simply not a creative tool, and it's not an open platform. You can't "peek" inside of a mobile app like I was able to peek into HTML. If I didn't, I would never discover it and it would never lead me to other platforms and programming languages. You can't see and play with raw files. You can't just open a photo in an editor, which leads you later into some creative fields like graphic design. Sure, you can "get creative" in Snapchat with your photos, but Snapchat is not a professional tool. When we wanted to edit our photos, we had to first get Photoshop, and learn the basics of working with it. Since it is a professional tool, it is an invaluable skill. I feel like this doesn't happen anymore. Applications like Snapchat are enough to fill their need for creativity and those kids are less likely to discover useful tools.

I got into tinkering with my PC because I had to edit config.sys and autoexec.bat to change virtual memory settings in order to play the computer games I wanted.

I share the concern that a phone is a consumer gadget much like the console was as a gaming platform compared to the Amiga/ST/PC stack. I'd imagine that kids that grew up with Amiga/ST/PC were much more likely to become programmers than those that grew up with consoles (Megadrive/SNES).

Wing commander ?

Never had enough memory for both sound and mouse.

I remember first being exposed to html/css at around 14 when I wanted to customize my MySpace page. I was curious and decked that page out (yes, it looked like puke but I was learning, dammit!).

Today's generation doesn't have that option in any of the popular social media platforms.

Tumblr has some of it left: https://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_themes

I would love to see some stats about the percentage of internet users that studied how to code in 1990's and today. I bet it will be at least one order of magnitude in favour of the former.

And? In the 1990s _nobody_ but the people most interested in computers used the Internet, now it's a commodity. Of course there's going to be a huge difference in that statistic.

That is the point. The ratio of people developing and people consuming is, imo, a healthy indicator of the internet. And we are, in the last decade and amid all the efforts to encourage people to code, having less people interested in software development than before. My main guess is that a lot of potential developers became content creators in silloed social networks.

Why do you say there are less people interested in software development than before? (And do you mean less absolutely or less as a fraction of the whole?)

Because before, to be a content creator on the internet you had to be a developer. Now, you don't need, you can use software created by others. This is good, is abstraction building. But it doesn't come for free. I don't have numbers to back my impression, though :)

(I mean fraction of the whole, but I would love to have the data to see if we are not having more people leaving software development due to increasing complexity or retired tech than joining. How many have left software development with the downfall of Delphi, Visual Basic, Clipper?).

The original sense of creativity has gone lost towards 'tying things together'. You can easily tie things together on an iPad but its comparatively hard to actually create something new.

Umfortunately many people praised the shareconomy without seing the downside that a shareconomy seldom creates new.

that's pretty normal. Once a technology goes into the mainstream and matures, people don't have to learn how it works anymore but juts use it. 50 years ago every car driver needed to have a pretty good understanding of their car. Now not too many people have even a basic understanding of cars but they still use one.

Came here to write this.

I heard this 10 years ago and it didn't came true. It is not coming true in the next 10 years.

It is not a skill at all to comprehend how to select the wlan, open apps, download apps and enter some email address for some free internet.

And how many reading books 60 years ago were learning to write them?

Books are just one form of text. There are plenty of others. Everybody who knows how to read books also knows how to write at least something.

It's not true for software. There are plenty of people who can use some applications, but can't write any application, even as simple as a helloworld.

I actually had the same thaught. Learning to read or even basic writing doesn't compare to the skill and effort it takes to write something interesting, let alone a novel. You just know enough to consume what others have written. Basically the same as learning to use an iPad.

What a profoundly ridiculous comparison.

Why do you think it is rediculous?

Genius comparison. I don't think the evolution of tech caused the current situation. Proprietary code does :)

Only free software could change it. I hear a lot of people feeling entitled to bash RMS, but it happens because they don't get the big picture.

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