this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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you know the computer thing is it plugged in?
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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?”
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."
So then the Greek Antikythera mechanism counts too then? Or maybe the Bell transistor. My point is that none of these things resemble computers as we know them.
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.
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.
I thought that late 90s was still millenial? Probably wrong.
I think the cut off between Z and millennial I see most often is 97. I was born in 98 and I feel like I'm in both generations at the same time