2 Aug
2004
2 Aug
'04
6:57 a.m.
On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
Sellam wrote:
> That's pretty much the same siutation with most electronics surplus
> stores. It's a sad fact: kids are, indeed, not building anything anymore.
> We're raising a nation of end-users, thanks to a number of factors, all
> boiling down to selfish indifference.
I think there are alot of kids designing websites,
programming, hacking, and
making the occasional virus. The fact that they put away the soldering iron
and took up the keyboard doesnt mean they are selfish or not creative, they
just get into different tools then older people who didn't have a computer
to play with when they grew up. When I was young I went out and purchased
some ram chips to fix my dead C64 (was stupid and touched a staticy TV while
my other hand was on the keyboard, ESD), equipment was expensive. Today if a
pc card breaks its cheaper to chuck it and get a new/used one then it is to
even think of looking for the parts to fix it, same with all other
electronics. Electronics repair places were the first to disapear, makes
sense that the surplus stores that supplied those buisinesses are next in
line to go. Even Radioshack does not carry much in the way of electronics
parts these days.
True, although there is a definitive shift towards software creativity,
rather than hardware. I am a borderline case.. when I was in uni. I
was playing with hardware ("Fred? Yeah, he's here.. look for two
short legs sticking out from under one of those PDP-11 racks down
the hall.. those are likely to be his.") but most of my classmates
were doing software-only, and, which is I assume what Sellam was
pointing out, they did not CARE what hardware their stuff was on.
These days, kids get taught Programming course in *java* .. when
I asked several teaching professors about that, they claimed this
is what both the industry (which will eventually take in those
newly graduated students..) *and* the kids themselves want.. they
want to learn about things, but not tied to any specific hardware
platform.
He got red in the face when I asked him how he's teaching kids any
base OS principles such as state-saving and interrupting. Meaning,
kids don't go there, pretty much. The next major version of a
known OS will probably be without interrupts, as none of the
programmers will have any knowledge about them anymore ;-)
--f