The deterioration of IT

its the unskilled/semi skilled low income

its the low income part you are missing

1980s/working class/computers does not compute

he never did say what his dah actually did

looks he is in IT 40 years, maybe it was 50% of his class in college had seen a computer on TV (black and white of course) maybe the BBC part is on Tomorrows world 😁

A lot of truth in there, it definitely happens - although the reasons tend to be a bit varied, in my view.

One huge problem is the absolute blindness of most businesses and product managements: they push for stupid, unusable, bloated features and designs just because it'd the "done thing" at that moment in the industry. A big example, that more than one poster already mentioned, is the push towards "touch inspired" interface designs on desktop software. It makes absolutely ZERO sense, it wastes the potential of the environment as being, you know, NOT a clunky smartphone (the elimination of keyboard shortcuts being one of the most egregious victims), but hey - "it's what everyone does!".

Managing development I've seen this happening so many times...new feature request, check it out, it makes absolutely no sense. The team make their point, propose a more reasonable design and implementation, business stand their ground - "do it this way 'cause the market wants so!". At that point, it's really tough to blame the devs for doing "just enough" when their insight, experience and technical expertise (the stuff they were hired for...) is pretty much disregarded in favor of "hot current fad".

That said...developers can add their share to the issue, sure. We're often the culprits of carrying the "let's not reinvent the wheel" concept way too far, often trying to put a truck wheel on a bicycle just because it's readily available - or because that too is the "current technical fad".

I'm quoting the definition ray. It's not mine.

In my era all most students had (that I knew was a walkman). Computer games were more of kids thing.

Looking at wiki

I never saw any of these consoles. I just don't remember seeing them around. I assume they must have been.

you don't seem to understand what working class and we do

can't ignore the facts Ray

Its after hours. Almost anything goes here.

As for arguing against a definition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk&ab_channel=bagheadinc

There could have been pockets where a influential teacher got people into something. We had one teacher who organized a bulk buy of scientific calculators for example. Seem like scfi at the time.

Today when you see people on low budgets, they might all have 500 euro iPhones. I don't remember any such disconnects back then.

Always classy.

Just a regular town in the south east. Lived in a three bedroom house. One bathroom. One car. My Dad worked for Department of Agriculture, my mother stayed at home. No family foreign holidays until 1990. School was the local CBS. The two lads with the Commodore 64 and BBC Micro did go on foreign holidays because their Dads had their own shops that did a good trade. Pretty unremarkable really.

most people who work in offices use computers, they might use a few database programs, email,zoom ,Chrome, ms teams, that does not make them experts in IT. more people go to 3rd level now. most students have a laptop, smartphone, they are used as part of the education process .more people use apps, pcs, laptops than ever before. you can buy a basic laptop for 350 euro.i think its great that it is used by anyone that wants to ,you dont have to go to college for 4 years.pcs were popular in the 80s, spectrum, commodore amiga, commodore 64, mostly used for playing games.there was probably a time when companys employed mostly qualified it staff just to run the computer network, database,servers,etc now anyone who works in a office probably uses a pc or a laptop ,but knows nothing about programming, or how the it infrastructure works.in the 90s, just to install certain games ,you needed some knowledge of dos prompt, batch files before windows

replaced dos as the main user os.

There was a time when only it experts uses pc s at work, secretary's typed up letters or bills on typewriters, time moves on, it's like radio, or video, 1000s of people make podcasts or videos on YouTube, some of which are better than the programs produced on tv or radio by trained presenters. Unfortunately theres 1000s of hackers out there some state sponsored who are constantly coming up with new software hacks to attack computer networks

Its about €500 in todays money adjusted for inflation.

In my area (midlands), home computers were noteworthy by being uncommon in the mid 1980s when I was in primary school. I knew one lad with a Commodore 64 and used to regularly pester my parents to go to his house to play games on it. He was from a working class family with not much money. A few others had Atari 2600s. At a guess I'd say that 10-15% of households, regardless of wealth, in my area had a home computer OR console in 1986. By the early 90s it was much higher, Amigas, Megadrives, SNES etc. Then playstations and PCs.

Most households had colour TVs by the mid 80s but there were still a few black and white ones about. Not sure if TVs were rented or not.

Also, VCRs were far from ubiquitous until probably the mid 1990s.

Had a similar experience. I remember our first VCR was a 2nd hand one with the those manual counter wheels. Like a giant cassette recorder. I don't think parents splashed out as much, because the thrifty times of their youth were engrained in them. They also would repair things rather then replace them.

From IT POV I'll bet a few people here hoard old obsolete PC gear far longer then they should.

Not sure you can derail an after hours thread.

Its interesting thread because of how the nature of Tech and IT have changed.

I see a good few threads on forums with IT people of our generation(s) falling out of love with working in Tech.