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Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by treeman79 on Thursday October 07, 2021 @01:37PM (#28789641)
In 2nd-6th grade school in late 80s we had to learn to program (logo) which was great fun. We had to get a perfect on a 100 question computer test to graduate 6th grade. RAM vs ROM vs Disk drive sort of questions. Not fun. At the time I complained endlessly because I kept getting 97 or so.

Wow did that set me up for success in the future.

This was private Christian grade school. Way ahead on the tech curve compared to most schools.

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by Sohcahtoa82 on Thursday October 07, 2021 @01:57PM (#28789916)
100% is ridiculous.

But perhaps maybe tests like that can get people to stop referring to non-volatile storage as "memory".

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by npteljes on Friday October 08, 2021 @04:03AM (#28796813)
I don't much agree with the RAM = "memory" thing. "Memory" colloquially is for remembering things. RAM and storage are both for the computer to remember things, so it's natural to think they are both memories. It adds to the confusion that there are "memory cards" that employ "flash memory", the same tech that powers SSDs, which is nowadays a primary way of doing storage.

If you think about it, RAM is short term memory, and storage is long term memory, no?

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by m4rtink on Thursday October 07, 2021 @02:17PM (#28790159)
Is that wrong ? Often I see RAM refered as memory with nonvolatile memory being reffered as storage.

Also there are old (ferite core) and new (NVRAM) technologies that are more or less both, further blurring the distinction.

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by Sohcahtoa82 on Thursday October 07, 2021 @03:44PM (#28791168)
> Is that wrong ?

Yes.

> Often I see RAM refered as memory with nonvolatile memory being reffered as storage.

That would be the correct nomenclature.

> Also there are old (ferite core) and new (NVRAM) technologies that are more or less both, further blurring the distinction.

The distinction isn't based on how it's built, but the use case and volatility. Memory is volatile and only intended for storing data for actively running programs.

SSDs and NVMe drives are storage, despite them looking like RAM chips, because they are non-volatile. When you remove power, they still have the data. A mobile device's "flash memory", which despite being called "memory", is storage.

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by pseudalopex on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:18PM (#28830614)
Tell IBM in 1955. "Magnetic cores are attractive as memory elements because they are small, fast, and they provide non-volatile storage."[1]

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US2778005A/en

Re:“Kids who grew up on smartphones do not know how to do an... by rchaud on Thursday October 07, 2021 @03:19PM (#28790910)
In my school (3rd world country, but expensive school), we had to draw the flag of our country (stripes, circles) with QBasic in MS-DOS.

This would have been around 1997. I remember complaining because I had an older sibling at the same school, and all they had to do was draw the flag in MS Paint.