[vcf-midatlantic] OT: people don't understand computers anymore

[Derrik Walker v2.0]

On 06/07/2016 02:08 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
>> It's a bit astonishing to me too.  We get job candidates
>> with CS degrees from reputable universities who don't
>> know what a register is, can't explain how basic sorts
>> work or why you would even want to know.  In my opinion,
>> the most evil phrase to come out of a software engineer's
>> mouth is "I don't want to have to think about...".  Yup,
>> it's all abstracted away.  You get a "container class"
>> with "iterators" and "find" methods and you're all set.
>> Not fast enough?  Throw more hardware at it.
>>
>> This is raising my blood pressure... gotta stop.
>>
>> Bill S.
>>
To be fair, there is a difference between some random consume sitting at 
home reading facebook, and a CS or Engineering student. I also don't 
think this is a new issue.  It's just that there are a lot more 
computers now than there use to be, so it's more obvious.

I remember, more than 20 years ago, when I was an EE major,  I was 
astounded at the number of people who made it to 300 and 400 level EE 
classes or physics classes, yet could not solve simple differential 
equations.  How the heck did they get that far?   EE and comp-sci grads 
should know that stuff.

But my mother has never really understood computers.  My wife knows just 
enough, but if she runs into big problems, she comes to the family 
computer engineer. I have plenty of family and friends I've known for 
decades that have no clue how computers ( or cars, in some cases ) work, 
and could care less and probably shouldn't have too.

How many people knew the hacking that went into making Atari 2600 games 
actually work? And it's pretty amazing they even did work, if you look 
at the architecture of that thing.

- Derrik