Should doctors think it’s sad when you don’t know enough about your body to self diagnose?
What about legal disputes? You are a power user of society and you still need to hire a lawyer to navigate its laws?
Well one of the takeaways was that Windows users often didn't even report crashes in the first place, or have completely generic descriptions that didn't help at all. So a better analogy would be:
Should doctors think it's sad when you ignore some part of your body acting up, or you suddenly passing out during the day out of nowhere? Or, if you do go to the doctor, all you say is "doctor I'm sick"?
I think they should.
Misinformation is more costly than no information. Disinformation is actually more informative!
I'm not even kidding, this is what software has become for the common layperson.
Modern Windows is pretty resilient. I've had a Windows 10 install going for three years that hasn't BSODed, force-rebooted, or otherwise hung.
Also call me when Linux gets proper HDR and HIDPI support. The first 'Retina'-class Windows laptops were released in 2013, ten years ago.
As for HDR, that's here or coming in the next couple months.
Has been here for nearly a decade now. It's pretty straightforward, and even Win32 programs can be made DPI-aware[1].
[1]: https://building.enlyze.com/posts/writing-win32-apps-like-it...
Windows can't handle this, and will render blurry text in system dialogs.
Call me when Windows figures out how to render text /eyeroll
> Windows can't handle this, and will render blurry text in system dialogs.
Fix:
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers" /v "C:\Windows\System32\mmc.exe" /f /t REG_SZ /d "~ HIGHDPIAWARE"
So, swinging this metaphor back to where it came from -- yes, it's not unsurprising that ignorance is the norm, but we must advocate for great enough personal education so as to empower the non-professionals. Bug-reporting is ultimately a user-empowering experience, designed to facilitate the user and make their tools better. This improvement feedback loop isn't developer-only, nor can it ever be; thus all of the reporting tools that are now common-place for the users.
A lot more motivating than not really getting any response.
I disagree pretty strongly with this. I think Millennials were kind of the sweet spot in technical literacy. They grew up in a time when they still needed to understand computers, and tinkered around with them a lot out of necessity (computer viruses all the time, Napster/Limewire, etc..). They also saw the start of the internet and cell phones becoming ubiquitous, which provided a lot of forced-learning opportunities.
Gen Z'ers, in my experience, have had almost no computer experience. They are great at using the apps on their phones, but phones have become so polished and easy from an end user perspective that they haven't done any tinkering. They've often never downloaded an mp3 file, torrent, fixed internet issues, etc.. because things just work now. Obviously there are exceptions to this, and really technical Gen Z'ers (like with every generation). But in my experience, that isn't the norm.
The hacker mindset just doesn't seem to be present in Gen Z like it was for Millenials and some Gen Xers. We took crap apart as kids to see how it worked, and we could still. Now things are so integrated and miniaturized, it's much harder to do that.
Add on top of that how Gen Z is almost all iPhone users and actually looks down on Android (the platform where you can dig in if you want to), it's no wonder the default is only an inch deep. Their tech providers and advisors have been telling them their whole lives how scary the world outside of the walled garden is and putting technical controls in their way to prevent them should they decide they want to.
We absolutely could have had the Gen Z that is more technical than Millenials, but we ruined it. It's not their fault, any generation raised like them would have been the same way.
Side note: If you're a Gen Z hacker (of which I've known a few and they are super impressive), I consider you a gentleperson and a scholar.
I don’t get the complaint, as a dev myself. Everything being easy and just working is what we intended for. The future! It’s here.
The problem being that if it doesn't just work, people just shut down.
To me it's almost a double edged sword. If I have to make something work, I learn about how it works, and I can solve problems if they happen.
If it just works, it's magic, and I have no idea why the magic stopped.
Don’t get me wrong, it also hurts me that I need to install an app to ssh to my server on my iPhone. Or when I can’t have a long-running process in the background. Or when I can’t automate things with shell scripts. It really does hurt. But this appliance form is really how things should be, at least until the day each and every user understands their devices, a day which will never come. Because why? They are tools. They are a means to a real life end. It’s a waste of human time to make everyone “tech-literate”. Users should not have control over their devices, because social engineering and scams will always be a thing. No matter how many “DON’T ENABLE THIS UNLESS YOU ARE A SOFTWARE ENGINEER” warnings you put grandmas will continue to be scammed.
Then what can let me have a native shell with root access on my iPhone, without jailbreaking? I don’t know, maybe a small on-device software knowledge exam to prove you are a software developer and understand what you are doing by Apple? Separately sold root access enabled devices for devs? Putting a big red warning in front of the root access “IF YOU ARE NOT A SOFTWARE ENG. YOU ARE %100 BEING SCAMMED RIGHT NOW” which is read by TTS ten times until one can dismiss it?
Or just get the Linux on mobile to feature parity with iOS and we won’t be beholden to corporations. Not saying it’s easy obviously. Still I’d like to see one organized FOSS mobile Linux project instead of a hundred desktop and a dozen mobile distros going on at the moment. OS lacks organization. Enormous amounts of available skilled human time wasted. Sad.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
In other words, there is a big difference between disagreeing with a statement that doesn't match what you've observed in reality at all, and being entrenched in your ways and insisting that the rising generation isn't "up to snuff". I don't see anyone dunking on Gen Z or insisting that they get their act together because they didn't have as many opportunities to dig into computers growing up.
I think there is a real argument to be made that nobody will ever need to be technically savvy again if AGI ever becomes a reality.
Edit: Gonna plug the book Scythe if anyone wants a fun read about an AGI run future that isn't the typical "evil AI" trope.
And thats what I think I'm seeing here, inexperience with what we consider to be technology basics being extrapolated to 'bad at technology'.
I think the argument you hint at could be interesting and have merit but to tie it back to this comment chain; I don't see any evidence of it here.