One dude just got his phD in computer science and admitted to me he cannot even use his phone. Wish I was joking

I mean, computer science is basically the mathematics of computation. It's not like the people working on knot theory or topology are great with 3d art or knitting

gotta add the babbage classic :

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Exactly

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

'Is this a windows computer'
'No this is a dell computer'

Sometimes the brain just needs a big button. Other times the button is confusing even though it says exactly what it does.

Similar position... Definitely accurate from my experience as well. There's a couple that clearly know, but a lot that don't even though they are deep in tech fields.

the average person has tried 0.7 operating systems

If that's true then how come I see non-programmers talk about the somewhat obscure OS developer, Dick Pick, all the time?

Nah that dude is just a post Unix purist about to launch into a 3 hour talk about how Plan 9 is (not was) the future.

I started a class this year, a forensics class related to computers. The intro prompt is interesting, what computer do you have, windows or mac?

wtf

That...can't have been real and serious

And BEOS, of course.

Technically most motherboard has a piezo speaker for POST beeps. Not sure you can route meeting audio through it though.

Poor godless fools.

I like how you stopped bothering to modify the copy pasta a third of the way through. 😄

The people here are much more interested in technology

The people here are arrogant as fuck.

Of course! How else am I going to play a video while I'm word processing?

Nah, the title and the field where a person active, including comp sci will not guarantee any of these knowledge savy things, also there are factor of sociability between people , one side can pretend and ignore other in spite or apathy.

You're absolutely right, we can do better!

The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life

Operating System

and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands

Kernel

Adams was truly a modern philosopher of great note.

It's most of them from my experience.

I've never seen a group of people who are more resistant to learning about their own hobby then techy people.

They learn their workflow they settle in and then just refuse to learn anything else at all.

The Linux community is only slightly better with that...

It's baffling

I was making a joke about edging.

Edit: It was pretty subtle, to be honest. Not my finest masturbation-related humor.

I work in the IT department at a university. Can confirm that many comp sci majors have no idea how a computer works, or even how to install an operating system. They sure know how to write code though.

Additionally, the entire desktop box is a CPU and the display is the computer

In Chuck, the TV show about a nerd accidentally getting a secret government computer stuck in his head while keeping his job at the nerd herd (geek squad) as a cover, they refer to all desktop PCs as hard drives. Including Chuck himself who is generally portrayed as the kinda nerd who'd know better (he and his college roommate had written a MUD, though it wasn't specifically called that, just called a game).

Literally less believable than the whole getting a CIA/NSA joint supercomputer "stuck in his head" part of the entire show.

Tech support has evolved since I got out. I don't remember this specific point of confusion. However, during the last job I had that involved any level of help desk support with non-technical people, Obama was still in office.

Most cs degrees I've seen, including my own include an operating systems course.

"How a computer works"

It really depends what you mean, and at what depth; theres a tone of stuff in there. Even then I think your mostly wrong, you just notice/remember the ones who are inept at using their computer.

If you mean run program x on os y, well then sure

I mean, I can - I know how, but boy having the GUI is nice. I can put a commit message title and a detailed message in a way that works well with my brain. Using two -m flags will never click with me, and yes, I had to look it up again just to leave this comment.

Yep, i can confirm this, many programmers i know are like this

Honestly, except from some old graybeards who worked on AIX for 30 years, I'm usually the only one in any given squad who can write shell scripts. Now of course they slop GHA shell scripts and wonder why performance is shit.

That sounds like my ex colleague. He could not comprehend people typing non numbers into his input boxes on his little application and I had to break thing à down for him. He actually got upset over it. "It asks for a positive, integer value. What's unclear about that? Why would you type text in?"
sigh

It's first in the last few years we've begun seeing somewhat stable gaming distros for Linux, which doesn't require a ton of fiddling for every single game.

Yet kernel level anti cheat is still an issue, so if you want to play some of the big PvP games. There's a lot of inconvenience to get them rolling

Yeah after almost 20 years of mandatory winslop workstation use, I finally had the opportunity to get a Mac work laptop. It's night and day. Still not Linux, and I had to learn a new UX in record time but at least everything I need and the environment I'm familiar with runs natively instead of having to fight this WSL shit every hour of every day.

And they don't even understand their phones.

Computer science has many fields and those even differ per country. Theoretical computer science is only one part of it. There are also many specialisations.

But you make a good point about topology and knot theory.

The average user installs fucking TikTok on their computer

Yeah but you're probably using a custom Linux distro (I forgot what it's called now) to investigate either a Windows or a Mac system because that's what everyone else has, and you're not investigating yourself.

Most of them dont even understand themselve

You're probably thinking of Kali Linux 😅?

There’s a big difference between “prefers a GUI” and “incapable of/completely unwilling to use the CLI”

I prefer a GUI for most stuff. They're way more discoverable, you don't have to memorize cryptic flags, and the mouse is just the more efficient input device to me.

Still I can use a terminal if I have to, that's just part of the job to me.

Friend's dad has a phD in computer science thought that iphones have a plasma screen

Don't forget Temple OS

"The average person probably only knows systemd and one or two generations of sysvinit" "and upstart of course" "of course"

It's not their hobby. It's their fucking job.

Yeah yeah that's it. It's not a very good destro generally speaking for general use but cyber investigations it seems to be the go-to.

When I was a child, Windows 95 came out and people bought it without owning a computer, deciding they would get a household PC now.

That level of hype is biblical and it sticks.

Edit: Then of course, Bill openly said he likes Windows being pirated because it would be the OS of choice of everyone. People would only know Windows.