I'm fairly new and don't 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
Yeah its more that I assumed each generation would get naturally better at tech, but its more like cars where the first generation knows how to fix them and subsequent ones don't, because the cars get so good that you don't need to
There's some truth to that. The computers I was first exposed to costs thousands of dollars and all you got was a text console with a prompt. You had to figure out how to make the magic box do something meaningful.
Now a Raspberry Pi computer with 1000x more compute power, memory plus network connectivity costs $6. The equivalent of the computers I originally learned to program on is now basically a disposable commodity.
I recently experienced this while building an upgrade for my 3D printer. The upgrade kit included a touchscreen. I found out later that the touchscreen was effectively its own separate computer with more than 10x more resources than the actual computer inside the 3D printer that was doing the most important calculations.
The compute and memory resource constraints were basically nonexistent factors in the design of the printer and the upgrade kit. Merely, a simpler computer was easier to design for and characterize, so the printer itself had a very simple computer, and for the UX, a "beefy" computer was much easier to program. It's bizarre seeing how little the amount of computer resources mattered. It might as well have been free.
I really wish those 6$ raspies were easily accessible though.
Orangepi was the alternative for a while. There are lots of "knockoffs" that are even cheaper these days. RPi decided they wanted to focus on business customers first and have kind of strayed from their mission in exchange for (likely) perpetuity and subsidizing the hobbyists and poor people they are supposed to care about.
Shockingly- Iâve heard from a few of my teacher friends that the upcoming generation isnât that computer savvy. (EDIT- âtraditionalâ computers that is).
Weâre starting to see the âtablet kidsâ grow up. They were raised with iPads and iPhones. And they didnât have to deal with figuring out how to âdeal with the inner workingsâ to download a bunch of computer programs. Their typing skills are apparently not that great as well for the same reason.
This is the consequence of so many years of idiot-proofing things. While not necessarily a bad thing most of the time, having shit that "just works" absolutely ruins troubleshooting skills. I see it all the time with my nieces and nephews.
I confidently told my retired parents that I thought we were approaching a world where self-hosting and open source would be far more common, I'm disappointed that it sounds as if I overestimated computer literacy in the new generation :(
The average person is just as unlikely as ever to understand the processed behind the tools (conputers) they use. But the nerdy kids of each generation have more access to knowledge that lets them nerd out even harder. And the connectivity of the internet gets ideas shared easily. If someone is interested in a hobby these days they have a knowledge base that only the most dedicated nerds had back in the day.
The average person is just as unlikely as ever to understand the processed behind the tools (conputers) they use. But the nerdy kids of each generation have more access to knowledge that lets them nerd out even harder. And the connectivity of the internet gets ideas shared easily. If someone is interested in a hobby these days they have a knowledge base that only the most dedicated nerds had back in the day.