[TUHS] "9 skills our grandkids won't have" - Is this a TUHS topic?

[Larry McVoy]

I can still remember my amazement when I learned that a floppy or a
hard disk wasn't one big file.  That's when the light went on that
there was a file system.

Another one was popen(), I saw the fork in there and my head exploded, for
some stupid reason I didn't think that libc would create new processes.

One light bulb after another.

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 10:08:34AM -0400, Marshall Conover wrote:
> A fun one: Using folders.
> 
> People in their early 20s and younger - mostly those who grew up with
> iPhones, Androids and Ipads - didn't interact with filesystems.
> Instead, they grew up using apps that handled storage for them. When
> they wanted a video, they were looking for it in a streaming app, and
> they used the app's search function. If they were looking at photos,
> it was much the same. Because of this, as hard as it is to believe,
> they don't really grok the concept - and this keeps popping up, to my
> delight.
> 
> It initially popped into my field of view last year, when an astro
> professor was running into trouble with undergrad students. The
> professor was asking the students to put certain data into certain
> folders, but the students fundamentally didn't understand what
> "putting certain data in certain folders" meant:
> https://twitter.com/saavikford/status/1425235201047908359
> 
> I love this quote from the professor, though unfortunately the tweet
> prompting it was deleted. The professor was asked something like "do
> the students not understand how drawers work?" Her response was, "They
> fail to grasp that the idea of drawers themselves might exist. Because
> they have a perfectly valid system of a laundry basket and a robot
> that retrieves exactly the sock they want when they want it (as I'm
> finally figuring out). Or something like that, anyway."
> 
> And this continues to pop up - I saw a reddit thread the other day
> that brought up entry-level computer science students who are coming
> in not understanding folders at all. It's being added to the list of
> abstractions that most people don't interact with day-to-day anymore,
> and which must be explained.
> 
> With that said, I have a friend my age (30s) who enjoys bringing up
> their conviction that the Zoomers are correct, and hierarchical
> filesystems should go the way of the dinosaur - with
> searchability/tagging being the correct way to handle storage. That
> could also be a fun discussion for the ML.
> 
> One other fun note for the prompt. Someone noted that, working at an
> apple store, they kept seeing young people use the caps lock key even
> when just typing the first letter of the sentence; it then clicked
> that this is closest to how phone keyboards work, and is likely where
> they got the muscle memory from.
> 
> Hope you're all having a nice morning,
> 
> Marshall
> 
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:40 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Programming an 026 skip card.  Inserting the skip card.
> > Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
> > Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive.  Remembering to insert or remove the write ring.
> > Cleaning floppy disk heads.
> > Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
> > =====
> > nygeek.net
> > mindthegapdialogs.com/home
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
> >>
> >> What are the 1970???s & 1980???s Computing / IT skills ???our grandkids won???t have????
> >>
> >> Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your keyboard has a stuck key
> >>          - something I absolutely don???t miss.
> >>
> >> Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime & wondering how a reboot might go?
> >>
> >> steve j
> >>
> >> =========
> >>
> >> 9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
> >>         <https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
> >>
> >>         1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
> >>         2: Using analog phones                                                  [ or an Analog Clock ]
> >>         3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
> >>         4. Reading and writing in cursive
> >>         5. Using manual research methods                                [ this is a Genealogy site ]
> >>         6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
> >>         7. Creating and mending clothing
> >>         8. Building furniture from scratch
> >>         9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
> >>
> >> --
> >> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
> >> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> >> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
> >>
> >> mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
> >>

-- 
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Larry McVoy            Retired to fishing           http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat