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