- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Memes@europe.pub
- memes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Memes@europe.pub
- memes@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27501866
source: @n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca
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I was pretty worthless with computers at 16 too.
Now I’m almost 40 and I’m working In the industry and slowly getting worse again
There’s one generation between boomers and zoomers? I’m pretty confident I know who it is you’re forgetting.
The thing is most of us cant even rotate a pdf, but we do know how to learn it.
YES! being able to google (or read) goes a long way.
Goomers and hoomers and foomers and schroomers are all alike and your generation is smarter.
Eh PDFs are just annoying to deal with. I could do this stuff the adobe acrobat when I had the paid version in school but I’m cheap and no longer have it. If I’m feeling desperate I’ll find the ghostscript command that does it otherwise I just do something horrible (for example scanning to jpeg rather than PDF creating an HTML page with both images and printing that to PDF)
From writing a limited amount of code to generate PDFs from scratch the standard is just cursed. It was using 7 bit ASCII until fairly recently resulting in an eighth of the document being wasted space. Also when the switched to PDFs being an open standard the specs went from something freely available on adobe’s web site to a challege of how to send 98 swiss francs to ISO to get access.
PDF24 has been my savior for anything pdf related. I learned about it and suddenly I no longer hate pdfs.
I’ve trained a lot of 18-22 y/os in the last 10 years and they are fine. Let’s not become the boomers please…
I am a 30 yr old boomer in uni with 18 year olds and they are mostly fine. We are learning programming so the base qualification is to not dumb with computers. BUT My teacher friends are supporting OPs screencap where children do not understand computers at all. Theres plenty of tales of students being asked to log into a 15 minute online test and entire lesson is spent teaching them how to log in one by one. The issue is they click the biggest and flashiest button and quit once they discover it does not lead them where they want to go.
There is plenty more evidence that the next generation is unable to handle anything more complex than most popular apps on phone. Is it really surprising when everything has been designed to just work and be streamlined so you don’t have to troubleshoot anymore.
Yeah, being dumb is hardware-agnostic. As some guy put it, “being stupid isn’t a big deal anymore; some of my best friends are stupid”.
It just stunlocks me a little bit as younger people have been around tech their whole life, unlike boomers, who were born before computers.“been around tech their whole life” more like they have a locked down phone, locked down game console and MAYBE a desktop computer. It’s too rounded out and consumer friendly now, you never have to peek under the hood.
Boomers have been seeing changes in communications, culture, and technology as revolutionary as anything in the last 20 years, for their entire lives. Things didn’t start getting wild just recently. It has been a romp for the last 200 years.
Never judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree.
Well yeah I didn’t learn at all about computers even in high school, when students did use a computer it was a cheap Chromebook. I bearly grew up with computers and thats the same for most people, the difference is I have autism so I hyprfocus on computers :3
The only reason we have to rotate the PDFs is because they can’t figure out how to use the sheet-feed scanner. Theres a picture embossed in the thing! And a sign that we put next to the button!
You need a full SOP with step by step directions and big pictures
They won’t fucking read it though, “I’m just not a computer person! tee-hee!”
For me, that’s been the major differentiator. The Boomers that don’t know basic shit in 2025 are proud of it; the Zoomers that don’t know have at least been willing to be shown. The Boomers that ASK to be shown though, ::chefs kiss::, now there is a passion to learn
The most satisfying joke in Questionable Content is one when robot asks another, ‘the hell is a PDF?’
I just copied from my phone and pasted to my steam deck. I still got it.
Just helped build my 12 year old cousin his first computer and was forced into putting Windows on it. Now, I get that it’s important that he at least understand what the “normal OS” is, but I did want to put at least Mint or something on there. Zoomers and Alpha really don’t know how to navigate even the basics, though, and this kid was no exception.
Well, technically I wanted to put something based on Arch but even I know that’s a bad idea for a sink or swim computer moment.
Yeah, schools do not have tech literacy classes and it’s devastating, this is why
I dunno how old you guys are but just in case… Schools never had good computing classes. When I was in school in the UK in the 90s we had MS Office lessons and that was about it.
Actually the UK took steps a few years ago to fixing that. Apparently they have actually computing classes now, but I don’t have kids of the appropriate age in school yet so I don’t know if it’s really as good as we’d hope.
Estonia used to have solid school classes since 2000s and now offers programming pretty early, but overall tech literacy is at an all time low.
it depends on the person. some zoomers are great with tech, hardware and software. others aren’t. same goes for every generation. this reeks of the “haha let’s shit on the younger generations” millennials have been mad about for years
Yeah I suspect what’s happening is that plenty of boomers were actually just bad at tech but they got to use the excuse that they didn’t grow up with it. Any gen z people that are bad at tech don’t have that excuse so it seems like they’re stupid, when in reality there have always been stupid people or people who just aren’t interested.
Sorry, but its different this time. A much smaller chunk of gen z is good with tech, and most of them struggle with basic concepts (like filesystems). Saying this as a gen z person.
I disagree. I work IT for a living. I fix a lot of devices for gen z but don’t often have to educate them on software. the amount of people 30+ who don’t realize I as a random IT worker can’t magically reset their yahoo password is insane.
And I’ve worked with some boomers who could use filezilla and other higher level than typical tech. There are some that are talented, but the average is noticeably lower.
And I’ve worked with some boomers who could use filezilla and other higher level than typical tech. There are some that are talented, but the average is noticeably lower.
2 generations. Gen X and Millennials are both of the right age to properly understand computers.
To put a finer point on it, it specifically the younger Gen Xers and older Millennials. That’s the “one” generation this post describes.
That would be the xennials.
It’s not just younger Gen X. I’m oldish Gen X and loads of us were programming computers for fun from the late 1970s on. By the early 1990s you couldn’t really avoid computers, and you couldn’t use them without at least a basic level of understanding. By that time many of us had been using them for a decade or more. It’s those who grew up without computers (before they became common) and those who grew up with iPhones that have a problem with tech.
I know younger millennials and older gen Z and they both can use computers just fine. The oldest Gen Z are nearly 30 now.
I’m on the older end of Gen Xers and at least the nerdier half of us not only know how to use computers, but we’ve seen the whole evolution of home computing since the Altair. We know in a way you never can why goto is considered harmful.
And on the other end of that, my niece and nephew are just on the cusp between millennial and gen z and they grew up playing games on Windows 95, 98, and XP. I think both Gen X and Millennials in their entirety fit the bill.
I’m on the younger end of X, and definitely agree about witnessing (most) of the evolution of personal computing.
Beat me to it
Everybody always forgets about Gen X
I’m sure they’re used to it and therefore are all like “meh, whatever”.
Yeah honestly we forget about ourselves just as often
Trying to explain to a GenXer what Cobol is and to a Millennial what a Ring Light is and its practically impossible.
This meme is just ForwardsFromGeandma minus the 😂🤣😂🤣 emojis. If GenX/Millennials properly understood technology, they wouldn’t all be on Windows.
Millennial what a Ring Light is
Ain’t nobody don’t know what a fuckin’ ring light is.
The Xbox would give red ones of death. 😤
😂
Pretty sure the only Cobol programmers left at this point are Gen X and older.
People are still on Windows because of massive industry momentum, and as the developers shift from being mostly Gen X and older millennials, to younger millennials and Gen z, things are getting progressively shittier. And it’s not only due to c-suite driven enshitification.
Pretty sure the only Cobol programmers left at this point are Gen X and older.
The funny thing is that we’ve got a ton of legacy hardware that still runs it, mostly in the public sector. But since GenX/Millennials avoided public jobs like the plague, what we’re seeing now are Boomers left to teach it to the incoming ranks of GenZs who can’t get a job in the dying Silicon Valley sector.
And just like that, Gen X disappeared from existence
If GenX/Millennials properly understood technology, they wouldn’t all be on Windows.
By that metric the only generations that properly understand technology are gen alpha and boomers, since they’re the most likely to just own a phone and/or tablet and no windows desktop or laptop.
I’m in the middle of Gen X.
I had a class in college that was centered on COBOL.
I certainly wouldn’t need anyone to explain to what it is.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like PDFs are significantly a less common part of life nowadays. Especially when it comes to having to edit one
God I WISH that were true because I personally fucking hate them.
Ah. You’re likely in the wrong job for it then. They are incredibly popular in any sort of digital paperwork job.
Can confirm, we’re using PDF for any sort of pretty formatted documents/reports we’re sending to clients.
I’m curious. What other format you have to send and receive documents?
Uncompressed .BMP files from Windows 3.11 MS Paint
Tiktocks
Just about every financial institution will use PDFs. Now editing PDFs, that’s slightly different (but only so slightly). Used to be you had to use a certain tech giant’s monolithic and expensive software to create/edit PDFs, but these days it’s second nature; maybe to the point that you’ve stopped noticing?
It’s just you.
Boomers: analogue phones and rolodexes. The nerdy ones knew Morse Code, though.
Gen X: grew up with picture books on assembly language programming
Millennials: know how to use Microsoft Word and Photoshop. Perhaps can unfuck Windows Registry keys if needed.
GenZ: “What’s a file?”
Really depends early GenZ was born in the late 90s/early 00s, and I can Attest that there’s quite a few who’re pretty good with computers. Mostly depends on what you got in touch with at home.
Now, Gen Alpha, I’d say, is on average proper fucked regarding computer knowledge.
Or, more to the point, the generational blocks don’t really matter much for this, but there’s certainly a declining aclemation with basic OS concepts.
The nerdy boomers built computers as we know them.
As we knew them, not as we know them.
Well, at a low level they are still basically the same. x86 still starts in 16-bit real mode. Mice still use USB 1 from the 90s.
Mostly it’s just a lot faster and covered with more layers of abstraction.
Computers as most people know them now are tablets and cell phones.
You know what I mean.
But you don’t know what I mean. Computers as most people know them now are tablets and cell phones. I blame X and the elder millennials for that.
Computers filled rooms back when the boomers (and earlier gens) were creating them, so even a desktop isn’t how they were known then. But it laid the groundwork.
Was Franklin laying the groundwork for computers as we know them when he discovered electricity? You have to cut things off somewhere for a statement like that.
It could be said so, but it’s a much, much more distant connection than working on things that are literally called “computers.”
That’s like saying that nerdy millenials invented mRNA vaccines. A very small percentage of the population worked on them while the rest weren’t even aware they existed for most of that time.
Regardless of how few, it was still people from that gen and computers wouldn’t exist today if they hadn’t laid the groundwork.
Saved that link. I’m about to end high school and i wanna do CS at uni next.
