Every generation has its great engineering challenges. While you may have invented TCP and wired up the planet, Gen Y'ers are here inventing HSPA and wireless-ing up the planet. New technologies will always come along, and there will never be a shortage of difficult technologies to implement.

To think that because you guys started this whole internet thing means there's no difficult work left to do? That's absurd.

I have a feeling that most of the real engineering that happens today (including wireless as you said) are actually depending quite a lot on the generation before Gen-Y. Gen-Y can't take credit for much of anything really. The only exception is some of the "Web 2.0" stuff.

The same argument can be made for any other generation - the real engineering that happened back in the 70s for ARPANet was actually depending quite a lot on the generation before it (transistors, dielectric research, the ENIAC and computers that came long before them)...

My point still stands: every generation has incredibly difficult engineering challenges to overcome. Yes, it all builds on top of each generation, but there's no reason to denigrate the accomplishments of one generation or another.

Then why is Gen-Y all like, we have all these amazing Interweb sK1Lz that no-one else does? 'Cos I'm not seeing it.

Well, give them some time. They're not all even born yet, from what I hear.

That's kind of a bullshit question. Of course we could. We don't need to re-invent Internet protocols (beyond fixing the mistakes of the previous generation -- IPv4 and DNS flaws, anyone?) at this point though.

Right now, it's more profitable to build on the platform we grew up with than to think about reinventing it. Programming talent and intelligence haven't suddenly declined in my generation thanks to the Internet and PHP. There have always been crappy programmers -- they just use PHP instead of BASIC now.

That's my point. You can be all like "yeah, we're fixing the mistakes of the previous generation". Everyone has 20:20 hindsight. But there simply isn't the supporting evidence that Gen-Y has technical skills that Gen-X doesn't or can't get. Gen-Y massively underestimates how much work had to be done for them to take all this infrastructure for granted.

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying we're more or less intelligent or capable than the last generation, nor am I blaming them for things like IPv4 (I mean really, it sure sounded like enough address).

We grew up with different tools, ideas and starting points though. To say we take the work of previous generations for granted is ridiculous. For one, it's a sweeping generalization. But what's more, it could be said about every other generation. The old saying about "standing on the shoulders of giants" rings true here. We're all building on the work of others.

Sure, there's nothing about your age that physically stops you from learning new tools or adapting to the world. If you can't adapt, it's your mindset that needs fixing.

Our world has been shaped from an early age by the Internet, and that will have profound effects on what we do with it from here on out.