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Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by antasvara on Thursday October 07, 2021 @01:36PM (#28789635)
The first-order effect of this seems to be a continuous shift towards high-level programming languages. I have a sibling around this age, and the technologically savvy kids seem to gravitate towards Python and Javascript libraries. When you can set up a server online for cheap and with simple installation instructions, these kids can avoid needing to learn a lot about how a computer actually works.

I think there's definitely a loss in some areas of tech, but there's corresponding gains in some other areas. We can see this type of growth with the development of many other technologies as well; how many large farmers do you think could fully care for their plants by hand? How many kids know how to write a letter, or use cursive? How much of a toilet could most people conceivably fix? Low-level knowledge is often "lost" because it's not needed to actually use an advanced technology.

I agree that it will be interesting to see what trajectory this takes. COBOL runs a huge amount of our financial infrastructure, and almost nobody knows how to update/fix it. It'll be fascinating to see what the next COBOL will be.

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by jonny_eh on Thursday October 07, 2021 @02:09PM (#28790052)
> these kids can avoid needing to learn a lot about how a computer actually works

That sounds like progress. Don't worry, plenty of kids will still be interested in how computers work at lower levels.

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by Jensson on Thursday October 07, 2021 @02:32PM (#28790362)
Problem is that plenty of those kids will wont have the opportunity to explore that interest since they wont have a computer to access. Even poor homes used to have a computer at home since it was such a useful device, but then they switched to smartphones and having a computer is becoming a class issue again.
Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by jonny_eh on Friday October 08, 2021 @12:17PM (#28800968)
For those that are interested, PCs are much more affordable these days.