I think I've noticed this pattern about tech people today that for example is concerning for me, I am not sure how old are you or what is your background, but I feel that today people don't enjoy stuff as much as my cohort, I go at work, and then SQL is a waste of time, Regex are a waste of time, Linux is a waste of time, Email servers are a waste of time, setting up a bouncer that takes 30 seconds is a waste of time, I am not sure if everything has become a waste of time, but do you people have a passion for tech related stuff, not specifically related to your message but every now and then I wonder what is not a waste of time
You're just stepping into the stack at some arbitrary level and figure "everyone should know how to do (and do) this at least".
For you it's configuring email servers and compiling linux kernels. Why not dig trenches for power cables or build towers for wireless communications? If the answer is "but I don't care enough about those things, I just build on top of them", that's exactly what others think about compiling linux kernels, writing boot loader configs or configuring email servers.
yeah but I think the context is important, if I am talking with developers/sysadmin there are some things that I would expect to be interesting, which I feel are matched when I speak with tech people in their 30s, but I have had many coworkers in their 20s that sometimes I have little in common with, but yeah I guess if I was an electrician or else I would be interested in that kind of stuff, I guess my mistake here is that I consider every one on HN either a dev or a sysadmin, but as my previous message, I was not talking specifically about that person specifically
Yea, my reason for not wanting to solve the problems of IRC isn’t a disinterest in solving problems. On the contrary, if I’m joining an open source project’s discord, it is most likely because
A. I’m interested in the problems that the open source project focuses on.
B. I was in the middle of solving a different problem and see the project as a path to achieve that.
My disinterest in solving the problems of IRC is because I want to avoid context-switching from my problems or your project’s problems to IRC problems I encountered over 10 years ago. If I’m forced to kerp context-switching, I lose hope that I can stay focused and get my current problem solved. I would rather have a way to pay money and get support than to try to solve an ever-growing yakstak of problems all at the same time. Progress is better than futility or overwhelm.
> if I am talking with developers/sysadmin there are some things that I would expect to be interesting
The cool thing about technology is that there is progress. We can do more, we can do it faster, easier, better, etc. Twiddling with the same shoddy tools from decades past is the opposite of that. A long time ago IRC was a cool new capability that was worth putting effort into setting up and using. These days all the hacks and workarounds involved are still required, but all they get you is an inferior chat platform. So, no. The tech that excites me are the new ideas and inventions that people are coming up with today, not some chat platform that is older than I am.
I mentioned multiple interests that I couldn't match, but yeah I think you're right, but also I was wondering, so you know we are social animals and try to find connections, and most of the times I hear that things are a waste of time, so I asked what is not a waste of time so that maybe I can learn it and find something in common :D
I feel like to have something in common with my coworkers I should have to watch unlimited amount of netflix and marvel movies.. which of course every one lives the way it wants, but I am more frustrated because loneliness is bad and not being able to find common passions feed that, I guess I gone OT ^^, but yeah I got your point, you're right I guess this argument is saturated now
> I mentioned multiple interests that I couldn't match
> I've noticed this pattern about tech people today
> I am not sure how old are you or what is your background, but I feel that today people
> I feel like to have something in common with my coworkers I should have to watch unlimited amount of netflix and marvel movies..
Step 1: stop being condescending and assuming moral superiority just because you have an interest in a random list of things you assume everyone shold be interested in.
Your approach is the classical "kids these days" that is so classical even Aristotle and Horace have said the same things.
Step 2: Accept that people are free to do in their spare time whatever the hell they want to. Watching unlimited Netlfix? Good for them. Setting up IRC bouncers? Couldn't be happier for them.
Step 3: if truly interested, you could try and figure out what exactly interests people in tech, and why they do it. Could be it's just because it pays more than the alternatives and they are much hapier carving out wooden dolls on the weekends.
If that's not your cup of tea, there are now communities around any and all things any person could be intersetd in, no matter how bizarre or "out of fashion".
I read this long thread of complaints as "Back in my day, we were nerds that managed to find jobs that would pay us for it. Today, new hires are just here for the money." I.e. the complaint is that our field is now a "normal" industry and not an esoteric hobby that only attracts hobbyists, which is an unwelcome change to them.
Common passions are great! If I’m joining a chatroom of your open source project, I’d be grateful to share in your passion for the open source project itself.
I'm in my late 40s now, and have been using computers for nearly 40 years (yeah, one of those kids.) Installed Linux on my 386 from floppies, and now in my day-to-day I write C# and maintain the linux servers where the .NET Core business application lives.
I've set up bouncers, ran my own email for years, and at some point I just became immensely bored of doing those things. There's an ungratifying sameness to having to fiddle with self-hosted email or hunt down why my irc bouncer crashed/went offline. This kind of friction extends up and down the stack, too, which irc client works on my phone? There are a few I might choose from, do I spend time trying them out over a period of days to see which is a decent one? Oh, well I still don't have threads, even if one client or another will auto-preview image URLs. And on and on.
I am disinterested, as you say, not because I don't want to learn it, but because I have.
To me, this sentiment feels similar to "Oh you claim to like pizza? Can I see your wheat and tomato farm and your cattle? What, you buy those at the store? I don't think you really like pizza."
The way I see the tech space today is that everybody likes pizza. Except back in the days, you'd have to go to the grocery store, buy your ingredients then cook it at home.
Today you have to drive for a 1-2 hours to find those ingredients, as people are simply not interested anymore in cooking, stores started just selling ready made pizzas.
In a few years you'd probably need to build a farm and start raising cattle. Or you could chose one of the five most popular pizzas from the supermarket. That's it, only five. It was deemed, by popular vote, or maybe "data shows", that those five pizzas are good, every other recipe is cancerous so it's outlawed.
I would add, that for the way I see things happening, I would expect someone to say "There are too many pizzas, so pizza are bad/fragmented/confusing, can't we just have one?" :D
Most of the stuff is broken in known ways to a terrible degree. Usability sucks. You can literally see the brokenness. Most of the stuff does not work properly, is slow, insecure and just stupid. It does not do what it is supposed to do, at least not without risking you harm.
Some stuff is a little bit better and only broken in more subtle ways. Some edge cases might not work. Some obscure security holes might be in there.
Then there is some very rare stuff, which has exceptional quality. But even then, we all know it probably is still technically broken. On the unlikely chance that the thing actually works and no mistakes were made, there is certainly a bug deep down in the Kernel or somewhere in the CPU.
You take some of the very rare stuff of exceptional quality. Does it do all the things you want it to do? Probably not. So at best it somewhat works, does most of the things you want it to do and only has unkown brokenness, hopefully very deep down and hidden away as far as possible.
Now comes the biggest problem: Even if you choose the least broken stuff, you know have to start maintaining it. Things below it will start changing and reintroduce more brokenness. By using it, you sign up to fight it.
Now I have this superpower to actually fight it. I make things less broken. But I am fighting an ongoing avalanche of brokenness. My day has 24 hours, I need to sleep some of them and the avalanche just keeps coming. Some days I like the amount I have shovelled away. Some days are ending with me still up to me neck inside it.
I am not like Sisyphos, other people are using the space where I shovelled most of the brokenness away. So it does make sense and is fullfilling. I have fun, when I look at a small area, where the brokenness will stay away for some time, even though I know, it will come back at some point.
I am not immortal. I can probably do this for another 50 years. So 50 more years of shovelling but vast mountain chains all around me.
So I have to be very careful to only pick the most precious areas to clear.
> I've noticed this pattern about tech people today that for example is concerning for me
Why should "I don't want to spend time on stuff that's not interesting to me" be concerning?
> I feel that today people don't enjoy stuff as much as my cohort, I go at work,
Your "cohort" is apparently hardcore computer people who are fine doing computer-related stuff both at work and in spare time. Well, tech people toda is a much bigger "cohort" than that.
> but do you people have a passion for tech related stuff
Yes. Yes we do. And tech-related stuff is often emphatically not fiddling with Raspberry Pis to set up obscure servers to maintain chat history.
It is waste of time when most of you learn quickly becomes obsolete. Linux was a once crude heap of hacks patched together with shell scripts, but the knowledge was stable enough to ship HOWTOs and FAQs with distributions.
