Having to figure it out is not specific to a generation. My generation had magazines and forums. Then came out google and SO. Now chat gpt.
The difference is where you start figuring things out.
Before, you needed to figure things out at your level, because it was the immediate area of mystery.
Now this level is generally solved, you need to figure things out at a different level:
- filter out the mass of irrelevant information, the out dates one, and the one from spam
- understand how all those complex abstractions interact. We have good resources on how each work individually, but the carthesian product of the monsters we build with them, we obviously don't
- debug some things that don't work when the magic fails, way below your level, or behind a service, where nobody is looking
The problem before was scarcity of info, lack of standardization and roughness of systems.
Now it's abundance, opacity and too much sophistication.
But everybody still have to figure things out. Just no the same challenges.
Agree with everything except out of date info. The old stuff is the good stuff you can’t find anymore because Google thinks you don’t want it. the newly generated SEO ai shit is what you need to filter out
It's fair to say that these are different kinds of "figuring out" though. Learning by trial and error is distinct from learning how to find and synthesize information and each lead to very different outcomes over the long-term.
I'd argue that the "find and synthesize" generation have an advantage within contemporary software paradigms because of their experience but, without deep knowledge of the foundations they are building on, they might be disadvantaged when it comes to imagining/creating new paradigms.
Then again, first-order thinking seems to be easier when you're not marred with the traditions and conventions of the past so maybe this isn't actually a disadvantage.
Trial and error is a fundamental part of how we work as human beings. There is no learning or understanding without it and no "figuring it out" without it. So that dichotomy between "trial and error" and "find and synthesize" doesn't exist. They are the opposite sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other.
Finding and synthesizing doesn't do you any good if you're unable to meaningfully apply it or understand what you're applying and what you're applying it to.
Trial and error also doesn't do you much good without the ability to back it with knowledge and to find the relevant knowledge.
Judging solely by the date of publication is not the best criteria for filtering. For example, Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think", published in 1945, is the oldest dated item in my reference library. Conway's Law comes from Melvin Conway's 1968 paper. David Parnas' 1972 paper "On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules" still applies.
The difference is where you start figuring things out.
Before, you needed to figure things out at your level, because it was the immediate area of mystery.
Now this level is generally solved, you need to figure things out at a different level:
- filter out the mass of irrelevant information, the out dates one, and the one from spam
- understand how all those complex abstractions interact. We have good resources on how each work individually, but the carthesian product of the monsters we build with them, we obviously don't
- debug some things that don't work when the magic fails, way below your level, or behind a service, where nobody is looking
The problem before was scarcity of info, lack of standardization and roughness of systems.
Now it's abundance, opacity and too much sophistication.
But everybody still have to figure things out. Just no the same challenges.