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Comment by throwaway5959 | Hacker News Reader

It’s crazy. My wife and I don’t have kids so we have limited interaction with them (mostly nieces and nephews), but there’s just seemingly no interest in how things work. They look at computers and phones as media devices and occasionally tools. Not things to understand, just use.

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Is this really a current kids generation issue though? I don’t think our or the previous generation was any more curious than them. Minus my friends who are engineers, I don’t think most of them know how anything works either.

Not to worry. When I was young I had no idea about how rotary dial phones worked (still don't, frankly) or FM or AM radio, despite my radar technician flatmates trying to tell me about it. And lots of other things.

But I did learn about lots of other things - for example I can write in assembly language for half a dozen different processors, and I know how to make a Gram stain for diagnosing bacteria. You learn what you need when you need it.

When I was younger there were no cell phones but everyone chatted (AOL/AIM) which meant they had to have some exposure to a computer. Now phones are ubiquitous, it would be interesting what percentage of high school students use a (desktop/laptop) computer regularly. I bet its less than the 90s which is sad. Something about being in front of a keyboard and mouse seems so much more open and inspiring than staring at your phone.

Having a(n otherwise brilliant) 16 year old ask me how to attach a file to an email the other day really fucked me up.

It's bad out there.

Is this really a huge surprise though? 16 years old nowadays just doesn’t use email like we did growing up. A bunch of other chat services has replaced it. I don’t think I used email aggressively either until college.

...you just made me realize I missed something.

They don't know the paperclip.

I need to add a text label to a few CRUD apps, brb

My daughter is about 3 and her hand symbol for a phone is a flat open hand against the ear. Most people who grew up with landlines would put their thumb and pinky out (corded phone).

I had a class of 20somethings in an intro to Python class and had to explain what folders and directories were. They had only used cloud storage and didn’t really have paths. Explaining that the path “c:\users\foo” wasn’t on everyone’s computer made me realize that people don’t organize documents and files.

Most computing devices people commonly use these days aggressively try to obfuscate away file and directory management so it doesn't surprise me that people lack this knowledge. Even Windows I have to turn a lot of default knobs to get it to show me the real paths and other popular platforms are clearly still worse in this regard.

This is by design of course. If it's extremely hard to get at the files and manipulate them they'll end up on the cloud, and eventually people will forget local storage is even a thing.

Why should a 16 year old know how to attach an email? I’m sure the only exposure to that kind of thing is whatever learning software their school uses, if any.

When I was that age the only thing I used an email for was logging into games or aim. I never had the need to send emails just create logins.

I think Disney and Apple ruined an entire generation of engineers with their whole "magic" spiel.

worse, a microsoft windows setup screen told me "sit back while we do our magic" .. word for word. hint- I code on linux for a reason

Didn't combustion engines and electronics go though the same cycles?

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