New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Old Folks with Unix Skills
Ask HN: Old Folks with Unix Skills
4 by hackerbobtas | 2 comments on Hacker News.
A minor annoyance for some of us older folk is seeing so many "digital help" courses for seniors. All too often the spiel implies something like this: "You grew old before digital devices became ubiquitous. Learn how to operate a smartphone or tablet, go online, send emails, share photos, shop online, join social media..." Actually, some of us grew old while digital devices became ubiquitous. We've been using digital devices for decades. The teenager who was programming in BASIC on a microcomputer is now in her 60s. That grey-haired 70-something might have been using UNIX at work every day in the 1980s. What grates about the "digital-help-for-seniors" programs is that they offer only a tiny subset of the learning we did and are still doing. For some of us, the nicest feature of general-purpose computing in the 2020s is the survival and ready availability of the command line, so we can do end-runs around complicated GUIs to get work done digitally. If you're one of the seniors to whom that last comment makes sense, do you think an online organisation of like-minded people sounds interesting? It doesn't exist yet, but I suggest calling it OFUS - Old (Folks/Farts) with Unix Skills. For starters, email me at unix@datafix.com.au. FYI, I'm 77 and still work every day in a BASH shell (as a data auditor).
4 by hackerbobtas | 2 comments on Hacker News.
A minor annoyance for some of us older folk is seeing so many "digital help" courses for seniors. All too often the spiel implies something like this: "You grew old before digital devices became ubiquitous. Learn how to operate a smartphone or tablet, go online, send emails, share photos, shop online, join social media..." Actually, some of us grew old while digital devices became ubiquitous. We've been using digital devices for decades. The teenager who was programming in BASIC on a microcomputer is now in her 60s. That grey-haired 70-something might have been using UNIX at work every day in the 1980s. What grates about the "digital-help-for-seniors" programs is that they offer only a tiny subset of the learning we did and are still doing. For some of us, the nicest feature of general-purpose computing in the 2020s is the survival and ready availability of the command line, so we can do end-runs around complicated GUIs to get work done digitally. If you're one of the seniors to whom that last comment makes sense, do you think an online organisation of like-minded people sounds interesting? It doesn't exist yet, but I suggest calling it OFUS - Old (Folks/Farts) with Unix Skills. For starters, email me at unix@datafix.com.au. FYI, I'm 77 and still work every day in a BASH shell (as a data auditor).
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