Population and Housing

[danbrotherston]

I am a boomer. I programmed an IBM 360 by typing programs on hollerith cards on an 029 keypunch. I bought my first personal computer in 1979. I built an acoustic modem from a kit. When did you buy your first computer, kid?

https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24

Yeah, I don’t think boomers as a group are really the problem here. If we’re going to blame anybody, it’s all the random people who don’t know anything about how it works, don’t care to learn, and who are pandered to by ill-considered features from people who should know better. For example, the way browsers are moving in the direction of hiding the actual URL of the page. Browser makers, as technical people, should know better.

Ugh...Scott Adams.

Anyway, I actually disagree with this point. We should develop technology to be more user friendly and more accessible. I don't have to know an internal combustion engine works to drive a car. I shouldn't have to know how the underlying technologies work to use the web.

Obviously it is a grey area discussion of whether a URL should be underlying technology or part of the user experience, but given how my parents have been using computers and the web for decades, still fail to understand what a URL is, I'd say there's a reasonable argument for it being an underlying component.

These things also change over time. At one point using the command line was the "user friendly" way of using a computer for people who didn't understand programming.

But this is a fairly large digression.

I certainly don't think you folks look down on renters, but tomh asked if people look down on people for renting, and yeah, they definitely do. I have experienced it. There is an expectation that you will own your home when you have the means, and if you don't then it's because you have failed to gain the means.

And yeah, the selection really is better in owned homes...it's just one more way that owned homes are prioritized.