Lisi Reisz wrote:
On Thursday 28 February 2013 19:31:03 Richard Owlett wrote:
Lisi Reisz wrote:
On Thursday 28 February 2013 16:01:03 Richard Owlett wrote:
as a senior citizen moving from Windows(tm) to
Debian(tm?),
Why is your seniority relevant?
Just trying to convey that I've enough real-world experience
to have a valid point of reference without heavy handily
touting that my intro to computers was when the common input
device was an 026 and core memory involved literal iron.
I've been chided before ;)
Yes, but you have told us frequently - and I really can't see the relevance.
It is not even as though it were unusual on this list. There are probably
even a nonagenarian or two. Bound to be at least one octogenarian. And you
_are_ heavy-handedly touting it.
Your experience doesn't make your point of reference of any greater value than
anyone else's. Many people go back a long way. You were obviously in the
miltary and/or in the States, since the first commercial computer this side
of the pond was in 1963. But many much younger people have more useful
experience.
Can't speak to heavy handed or not, but let me suggest several points of
relevance:
- those of us who go back a bit date from a time when computer science
was an offshoot of electrical engineering - i.e., far more emphasis on
hardware than software - can't speak for Richard, but built a lot of
analog and digital circuitry before ever touching a computer - gives a
very different perspective than starting with programming (I see it in
my son, who's first experiences were with Logo and Java; he's now in his
second year of a computer science degree program and has yet to have a
hardware, or computer architecture course, programmed in assembler, or
taken a course in compiler design, or operating system internals - they
seem to be going top down, whereas in earlier days, we worked bottom up)
- one of the results of this experience is that hardware compatibility
and driver issues are second nature to those who grew up with them;
whereas younger folks who have grown up with pre-loaded operating
systems and "plug and play devices" tend to find linux (and BSD)
installations a bit more daunting (leading in many cases to whining)
- also, those of us who date back a few years still think of computers
as things that "need some assembly" and bring that view to system
software as well
Which leads me to take just a little issue with your comment that
"younger people have more useful experience." I'm actually not entirely
sure that's true. If anything, younger people have narrower (or at
least different) experience.
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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