It didn’t start grey but then I read the issues tracker.
Because the replacement comes from non-graybeards in FOSS, and their replacement from without-beards in FOSS, and they come from youths in FOSS, and they from teens geeking around with computers, and oops - teens are not geeking around with computers, they are watching reels and scrolling recommendations and doing other bullshit. If they have a PC, it’s an unloved work tool for them, with crappy bloated Windows, crappy bloated software for work and studies, not always crappy, but bloated games, you get the idea.
Because there was a generation very fertile on geeks. It’s going away. There are demographic pits and there are demographic, what they call them, hills? The point is, we are seeing the effects of the latter.
and they from teens geeking around with computers, and oops - teens are not geeking around with computers, they are watching reels and scrolling recommendations and doing other bullshit.
“Youth bad.” Lazy take. As if everyone in the gray beard generation was tinkering around with computers? Plenty of youths still tinker. Posting condescending shit like this is just going to turn them off from pursuing/contributing.
It’s not youth bad. It’s that in the 80s and 90s, computers were fun and required a lot of tinkering. Nowadays they mostly work. They’re boring.
People who tinkered learned stuff. Users just know how to use a couple applications.
I don’t see anything that could be considered a “Youth bad” statement in that comment. It’s a complex issue, influenced by a myriad of factors.
For example, I could dissasemle and reassemble my first PC without any prior knowledge. I had to learn to use DOS to navigate the OS and get things done. I got a book from the library about it, and spent hours upon hours just learning about how the file structure, commands, programs, external media, etc. worked before I could do anything remotely useful.
Today a PC/tablet/phone is a black box, you have to actively WANT to tinker in order to learn such about how they work. And most big tech companies try to punish you for so much as trying to replace a battery yourself.
I suspect you are projecting some personal feelings onto a stranger’s comment.
They aren’t just a black box, tinkering with them actually has negative consequences. On Android getting root access results in Safetynet attestation failing and on iOS you can’t even get root at all unless you are happy to run some bins from questionable sources. Things are very different for youths. As someone else stated to tinker in the way you mentioned means getting an Arduino or some kind of tinker-friendly SBC.
I’m really confused by your reasoning here. You’re describing how it was extremely difficult to you and you had to go to great lengths to learn technology. Not everyone did this back then not does everyone do it now.
That was the stuff you needed to do to do things like: play video games on your computer, get online and chat with people, hell even use your PC to write an essay and print it out (or even setup your printer to begin with). You didn’t necessarily have to go as far as they described to do that stuff, but you had to do some of it.
Nowadays there’s no equivalent. You don’t have to at least kinda understand the filesystem to play minecraft on your iPad.
I think you’re missing my point. I’m not saying everyone capable of using a computer today is equivalent to that level of dedication and curiosity. I’m just saying that in the same way only a handful of people do that today only a handful of people pursued it in the past. It’s become easier to use computers, but hat doesn’t mean there still aren’t people who learn the ins and outs of them today like people had to do in the past to use them.
I think you missed my point, which is that everyone who used a computer back then (less of the overall population) had to at least dip their toes in learning how they worked back then. This meant that a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten interested in computers found out that they really liked them and started going down the rabbit hole on their own from there.
People would get a computer for school, buy a game for it, and have to learn how to fix the computer when the game didn’t work. Hell, in the 80s (as a 90’s kid I missed the boat on this one) there were magazines that included games where you had to type the code for the game (in BASIC) into the computer yourself for the game to run. Many of those magazine games had bugs so if you wanted to fix it you had to learn some basic coding skills to spot the bug/typo in the magazine.
Nowadays such entryways into the computing hobby are far less ubiquitous, you have to seek them out. I’m not saying people now are less capable or less curious or that the hardcore nerds won’t still get into the hobby, I’m saying it used to be required for playing PC games or social interactions online. There used to be incentives for people who otherwise wouldn’t have tried to figure out how computers worked, and as a result a lot of people who didn’t necessarily think of themselves as would-be computer people ended up getting into computers.
Gen Z/Alpha are the new boomers. I teach hundreds of so called intellectual cream of the crop per year. It was bad before the pandemic, it’s seriously concerning now. The youth has largely divorced from reasoning and are used to reason in simple inputs to simple output. I am genuinely scared.
Sure, sure, old man. Everything was better when you were young.
There never was a majority of people who were into computers. It was always a minority. And I’d argue that nowadays there’s more developers because there’s simply more people with access to computers.
Some of them won’t like them, some will be neutral and some will be “geeking around”.
And having seen some code from people both older and younger, the younger ones are better (note that it’s my anecdotal evidence). And you at least can train the younger ones, while the “experienced” will argue with you and take energy out of your day.
I’m so tired of the stupid “when I was young, everything was better”. You know what else was exactly the same? The previous generation telling you how everything was better when they were young. Congrats, you’re them now.
Sure, sure, old man. Everything was better when you were young.
I’m 28.
There never was a majority of people who were into computers. It was always a minority. And I’d argue that nowadays there’s more developers because there’s simply more people with access to computers.
I’ve literally said that the kind of access to computers matters. In my childhood it was Windows 2000 (98SE when I wasn’t intelligent or interested enough). In those greybeards’ childhoods - I guess a greybeard is someone who didn’t have a computer in their childhood, but with programmable calculators, or automatic devices (like sewing machines) manufactured then, it was easier to grasp the initial concepts.
Human brain is not a condom, it can’t just fit something as messy and big even to use as today’s desktop OS’es and general approaches and the Web. It will reject it and find other occupations. While in year 2005 the Web was more or less understandable, and desktop operating systems at least in UI\UX didn’t complicate matters too much.
Some of them won’t like them, some will be neutral and some will be “geeking around”.
But the proportion will change in just the way I’ve described.
And having seen some code from people both older and younger, the younger ones are better (note that it’s my anecdotal evidence). And you at least can train the younger ones, while the “experienced” will argue with you and take energy out of your day.
Maybe that’s because you are wrong and like people who bend under the pressure of your ignorance. Hypothetically, this is not an attack. Or maybe just those who don’t argue, that’s a social thing.
Also, of course, people whose experience has been formed in a different environment think differently, and their solutions might seem worse for someone preferring the current environment.
As you said, that’s anecdotal.
I’m so tired of the stupid “when I was young, everything was better”. You know what else was exactly the same? The previous generation telling you how everything was better when they were young. Congrats, you’re them now.
Well, this would mean you’re tired of your own mental masturbation because this is not what I said.
I’m talking more along the lines of everything coming to an end and this complexity growth being one of the mechanisms through which this industry will eventually crash. Analogous to, say, citizenship through service for Roman empire.
Grey-stubble Gen-X’er here… The 80s and (moreso for me) 90s were a great time to get into tech. Amiga, DOS, Win3.11, OS/2, Linux… BBS’s and the start of the Internet, accompanied by special interest groups and regular in-person social events.
Everyone was learning at the same time, and the complexity arrived in consumable chunks.
Nowadays, details are hidden behind touchscreens and custom UXs, and the complexity must seem insurmountable to many. I guess courses have more value now.
Me, thinking about the days of dial up: 😭
Dzzzz rrrrr bidibidibippbip KRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…
Basically everybody making a game for Amiga made the equivalent of their own graphics drivers. Programming direct to the specialized hardware, and M68000 assembly was so easy and intuitive it was a joy to use.
But that way of programming apps is completely obsolete today. Now it’s all about abstraction layers. And for a guy like me, it feels like I lost control.
If you want to program “old school” you have to play with things like Arduino.
I’m a relic now, that’s just how it is.Time to program the ESP8266 :-)
Normal, mainstream software expected users to run DOS commands and edit autoexec.bat/config.sys files, and installing new hardware often involved configuring motherboard DIP switches and trying to figure out what “IRQ” and “DMA” means. There is no equivalent to that today. Plug it in, turn it on, and you’re done. 9 times out of 10 you don’t even need to install a driver, your OS already has it. Where does the door to learning and discovery present itself? With plug and play systems and walled garden app stores, everywhere a user could possibly come across some more advanced concepts has been muted and decorated over with pretty conveniences. Computers are toasters now.
Eh, if you’re into computers, you’ll find your way. My first “programming” adventures were writing batch/vb scripts and putting them in the startup folder and watching the teacher lose their shit when when their computer turned off after five seconds. Or watching all of the classroom open and close the CD drives 50 times when we were the first to have an IT class that day.
and installing new hardware often involved configuring motherboard DIP switches and trying to figure out what “IRQ” and “DMA” means.
That part is about IBM PC architecture more than it is about computers in general, including personal computers of that time.
I think it’s more a matter of the ideals of the times, Foss was created in the 80’s, as I see it as an ideological child of the 70’s, a period of time where progress, optimism and idealism about creating a better future and a better world probably peaked.
Of course there is also idealism today, but it’s different, at least the way I see it, the sense of quick progress especially on the humanitarian side is gone, the decades of peace with Russia is broken, and climate change hangs as a threatening cloud above us, and the rise of China creates turbulence in the world order.
So although things maybe weren’t actually better in the 80’s, there are definitely aspects that look very attractive in hindsight.But as I see it, the mentality for FOSS is now stronger than ever, because aside from idealism, it’s proved itself to also be a pragmatically good choice in many situations. But all the original founders and enablers are of course old today.
And complaining about how “people today” use technology is stupid, because chances are we would have done the same had it been available to us when we were young.
I disagree with your idea of real world turbulence affecting it. Things were going the wrong way even in 2005. Dotcom bubble, Iraq war, those things - maybe.
I actually think that USSR’s breakup is what long-term caused how our world has become worse.
Say, in terms of computers and mass culture too, they sometimes treat the 90s as a result of that breakup, but that doesn’t quite make sense, despite a few armed conflicts, it was a gradual process, CIS as an organization was treated as almost a new union in making even in my childhood.
That breakup has released a lot of dirty money into the world, and through not the cleanest people in western countries, too.
And ideologically - the optimist version of the Cold War ending was some syncretic version of the “western” and the “eastern” promises for the space-faring united future. And much of the 90s was about, often dystopian, but fantasies in the context of such an utopia.
IRL both optimist promises were forgotten. Thus the current reality.
Wow you are way off time wise, I spoke of the 70’s and 80’s. Everything you mention is AFTER that.
The Foss idea is early 80’s and EFF was created in the mid 80’s, and as I mentioned, based on the ideology of the 70’s.
The turnaround was after Carter when Reagan was elected, not just in USA, but also in most of Europe.I actually think that USSR’s breakup is what long-term caused how our world has become worse.
I agree, but initially it was all cool, a lot of Europe achieved freedom and democracy, and the Soviet states turned to democracy. We even had cooperation between the West and Russia initially. Unfortunately Putin completely ruined that after he came to power in 1991, which is also around the time Linux started.
Wow you are way off time wise, I spoke of the 70’s and 80’s. Everything you mention is AFTER that.
I meant the “peace with Russia” part by that, sorry.
The Foss idea is early 80’s and EFF was created in the mid 80’s, and as I mentioned, based on the ideology of the 70’s.
Meant that exactly, that (in my perception) there’s something similar in that ideology with science fiction of the same time, cinema, electronic music, industrial design and general techno-optimism. Some kind of universalism, like in Asimov’s Foundation.
Unfortunately Putin completely ruined that after he came to power in 1991, which is also around the time Linux started.
1999, 1991 is Yeltsin, but one is a logical continuation of the other (many Russian liberals disagree, love Yeltsin and hate Putin, don’t listen to them).
The turnaround was after Carter when Reagan was elected, not just in USA, but also in most of Europe.
Perhaps ; here I’m too ignorant.
1999, 1991 is Yeltsin,
You are absolutely right, my bad on that one. But actually under Yeltsin there was still room for optimism, and in those years cooperation between the west and Russia increased.
Lol yeah that was some anecdotal evidence!
What’s next, girls vs boys code? People wearing hats vs people not wearing hats code?
Manager material right there.
BTW if an old geek argues that your code design/decision is bad then you should probably listen. But that’s what beginners don’t do, they think they know it all…
I think this is also a problem of old timers not being able to articulate their concerns well. There is probably a reason they do or don’t do something a certain way, but if they can’t explain why, then no one is going to listen. Blindly following someone for percieved wisdom doesn’t teach you anything.
I actually like it when someone can show me why I’m wrong, because it saves me time. But if you can’t tell me WHY my idea won’t work, I’m probably just gunna do it anyway to figure it out myself.
I think this is as much a case of bad teachers as it is bad students.
Yes totally. I mean there are the same people just with an age/experience gap.
Glad you can read and repeat stuff! I presented it as such to avoid wannabe smartasses, guess they still arrived. Since we’ve touched on the subject of managers and hiring, do you often hear the phrase “not a cultural fit”? Wouldn’t surprise me.
If an old geek argues with a senior architect about architecture, I kinda think the architect is the one who’s right in 99% of cases.
And you’ll be older tomorrow. There is no escape. Being a dick about it won’t help.
Given the person said they’re 28, I’m actually older. And I decided to not be a dick about it and to not pretend that everything was better when I was young. Everything was different, sure. Some things were better, some were not. But I decided to not do the whole “back in my days” thing because I always found it stupid and luckily that didn’t change with age.
It’s ultimately a question of money. Older guys with software engineering degrees and fancy salaries can spend their weekends doing free community service in the form of open-source development. Younger people have to worry about job and rent and bills, they simply don’t have that kind of free time.
Add to that the growing complexity of the software. Something that could be done by an university student before, like writing an OS from scratch, won’t be nearly as useful as it would in the '90-s, because it was already done before, now you have multiple OSes to choose from. And joining an existing software project is hit-or-miss, some are inclusive and some are an old boy club where you need to know the secret rules.
One aspect of FOSS that most people don’t appreciate is how it’s funded. Like how it’s actually funded.
Once you put a dollar value to the hours put into it, it fairly quickly becomes apparent that most FOSS projects are basically only possible because super rich software engineers (relative to the average person) have the relative luxury to be able to dedicate a ton of free time and effort to building something they think should exist.
It’s why there was a huge FOSS boom after the dot com crash when a ton of software engineers suddenly got laid off but were relatively wealthy enough to not have massive pressure to immediately start grinding a 9-5 again.
Yup. I did a fair amount of FOSS in school to build a resume, then I started a career, got married, and had kids, so now I don’t do much. I plan to do more when the kids get older, but I currently have other priorities.
It can be really hard to get that motivation back. I said the same thing way back. However now I’m a a solid career point, my kids are in college, and I’m divorced. I have to reinvent my life according to only my priorities. This is my opportunity. Yet I’m doom scrolling. Time flies with useless crap and the motivation to create is not as strong
I feel that. I spend a lot of time doing stuff for myself (playing games, watching videos, and some doom scrolling), but I keep telling myself it’s because it’s inconsistent in frequency and duration.
But at the end of the day, it’s largely an excuse. I contributed to Lemmy a bit when I switched, and I could totally find a few hours a week to help with something. I just don’t, because it’s always a tradeoff with other things I’d like to do, some of them also productive.
So I guess we’ll see what I do. In the next 5 years, my kids will be transitioning to being more independent, and I’ll have more and more time available. My current plan is to get more involved in FOSS, but we’ll see if I actually do.
One rather obvious reason is that society has a lot of greybeards in general. The baby boomer generation was named that for a reason, and people have been living longer on average. Lots of countries are struggling with the demographic effects. There’s no reason to expect that tech or something even more specific like FOSS would be exempt.
Another aspect here is that FOSS is still kind of new in society. There’s just more people who have had the chance to age into FOSS greybeards than when those greybeards were young. (And they were thus likely to a lesser degree blocked by entrenched greybeards when they were getting started.)
People born in the 50s have long retired. The grey beards are not baby-boomers. They are people born in the late 60s and 70s. They are people who grew up as computing technology matured. They started coding low level and had careers building the infrastructure of computing which is what a lot of FOSS is.
However the question is not why these people have aged? It’s why hasn’t there been a steady stream of people taking their place from younger generations?
I believe it’s because the generations after them have careers working at higher levels of abstraction. Often going lower level is seen as black magic that is unknown to them.
There may be some truth to that, but seeing Rust take off means there’s still interest in lower level languages. Rust is making its way to the Linux kernel and other established FOSS projects, which improves the chances for people uncomfortable with C-style languages to get involved.
But I think the explanation is simpler: younger people don’t have the time for FOSS, and few companies pay people to work on FOSS. So these graybeards are either grandfathered into the few roles that exist, or have sufficient time (e.g. kids moved out/largely independent).
Yes the capitalist miracle ensures that people who want children can’t afford them or even if they ca, they don’t have time for them.
Why would these bitches be mothers when they could be making daddy some mother fucking money?!
Most old FOSS is written and maintained in programming languages that Kids these days™ don’t think are cool (and were probably never taught about in school either).
Hardware used to come with an extensive manual. Hardware these days is a vendor-locked black-box with built-in obsolescence that might get you in court if you open it.
Kids were more curious and spent more time outside, Kids these days™ spend most of their time under the light of screens, inside their safe spaces and can’t even tie their shoelaces.
Nah, the kids I know learned C just fine. C is simple, C is all you need for writing kernel drivers, pointers are not that hard if you explain them well, it just feels really pedestrian compared to Python or Typescript.
Can the kids even be trusted with shoe laces anymore?
I can barely be trusted with shoe laces these days tbh
Elastic shoelaces. Game changer.
Wait until you hear about space age technology!
Paris Hilton’s dog, south park car scene. Jpeg
I would think it’s a good thing that there are a lot of greybeards in FOSS? If the claim is true, then it should mean that once you get into FOSS you tend to stay there.
The article seems to be referring to FOSS code contribution more than user adoption, but the same idea holds. The more I learn about my distro and its packages, the less scared I get about something going wrong that I can’t fix and the less likely it is I will go back into an OS riddled with ads and spyware.
For code contribution I only ever managed to do a PR for a Kodi plugin, and even then it was only because this amazing guy from their team walked me through the whole thing step by step. It was quite intimidating figuring out how to do that stuff for the first time.
It’s good in some ways, but I read one of the points as a generational turnover. Graybeards are the people who invented a lot of foss and stayed true to the calling. True heroes. But there needs to be a continuation, fresh blood, a bright future, and the graybeards won’t be around forever.
Graybeards are also people who got into foss when it was easy to start. The fear is there are higher expectations now, higher complexity, creating barriers to entry for the next generation
Greybeards, like in Skyrim you mean?
Hence the power of the shout “sudo rm -rf*”!
I, USE ARCH (btw)
I can’t speak to the rest but I started working on Linux and other FOSS in ~1995 as a young man and just never stopped. The same applies to many others I know. We started young and are still here.
So a lot of people have pointed out the obvious factors like experience, time, and money. But I think a another big one is the culture. A lot of FOSS has been impenetrable ime with how many keyboard warriors exist in discord and forum communities. Doesn’t exactly make the newbie experience the best
Nowadays it’s mostly college kids trying to add something to their resume. And it’s all note taking apps
