The deterioration of IT

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588893#Comment_119588893

its the unskilled/semi skilled low income

its the low income part you are missing

1980s/working class/computers does not compute

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588548#Comment_119588548

I can tell you for a fact that that 50% stat is definitely true.

It is just that they didn't know what they were, or how to turn them on (never mind use them).

But they did look shiny and expensive during the burglary so they went into the sack along with the other loot

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588919#Comment_119588919

he never did say what his dah actually did

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588893#Comment_119588893

No Ray we don't. " people who are employed in unskilled or semi-skilled manual or industrial work."

Even in College much later most of my class didn't have computers. We had to book time in the lab or queue for them. Around project time, they would open early morning, late into the night to allow people to get some time on them. I did know a few kids from well off families who bought Macs in the 90s. Wasn't common though. Least not in my college.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588963#Comment_119588963

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 😁

nullObjects

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584889#Comment_119584889

How do I thank something more than once.

Deadlines being forced on developers is probably causing most issues in big IT companies

A lot of developers have pride in their work and dont want to release something they know has flaws but they aren't always given the time to build a robust solution, just one that's good enough to go out the door

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588843#Comment_119588843

Not at the time. The computers I am talking about were primarily used for gaming and seen the same as games consoles. They were dramatically effected by the game crash. Google all you like but if you aren't looking at games/computer market of the time then you aren't looking at the relevant details.

You are literally looking at things you THINK effect a market without looking at the actual market and the prices. Like Monkey there claiming I said I used the VIC20 to do accounts when I never said that. You are making a lot of assumptions on a subject you weren't interested in and using the wrong information to make claims of how you THINK it would have been as a result. If you don't think 5 years is a long time in consumer electronics then do you pay the same launch price for a mobile phone brought out 5 years? Things weren't as fast then but they were still speedy compared to days before and many of the companies just dropped the the prices as they didn't understand the growth of technology and the need to innovate rather than keep selling the same thing.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588963#Comment_119588963

You speak for the whole population now? In college most people didn't have PCs and extremely rare. That is irrelevant to what was effectively sold as a games console back in the 80s but was actually a computer. In college how many people had some form of games machine?

Ray Palmer

No point in talking about how I have been using computers for over 40 years and was able to get one.

I had one I knew lots of people with them and you may not have had that expereince. It is irrelevant to the point of the thread which is about IT standards.

H3llR4iser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588312#Comment_119588312

Indeed - this was more or less the same across Europe and the US too. Back when I was in school (talking similar years - 86/90) plenty of kids had C64s or Spectrums. Towards the end of the decade, even Amiga 500s started entering the picture, before PCs became popular from the mid-90s onward.

One interesting/funny difference was that in Italy, having a CONSOLE was usually the "rich kids" exclusive; Most parents were against buying Nintendo and Sega as they were perceived as expensive toys. Also, by the mid-80s, the price of home computers had dropped significantly so...yeah, they were the cheapest option, since everyone used cassettes (the disk drives, unless integrated, were as expensive as the computer itself).

H3llR4iser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588285#Comment_119588285

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".

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589188#Comment_119589188

Where were you? Ballymun?

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589076#Comment_119589076

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

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_in_video_games

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

monkeybutter

Lets look at the actual facts for a second

USA

1984, 9% of adults had a computer at home

USA, Music Town USA

Not even Ireland, those skewed into the middle class and upper class and of course skewed away from older people without kids

In Ireland way less

In working class dublin... well

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589234#Comment_119589234

That does not mean that people use that definition so you don't get to say how others define it just that it has a definition. I know plenty of people who use working class to mean social welfare dependent. I spoke about those views not a definition.

Why are you going on about something you don't have knowledge on? It is irrelevant to the topic so just let it go

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589188#Comment_119589188

1990 was light years away from early 80s.

You did see amigas in the shops. I only knew a couple of guys with Atari's myself.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589274#Comment_119589274

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

Ray Palmer

Always weird when people admit trolling and get no responses don't realise they are on ignore list

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589309#Comment_119589309

can't ignore the facts Ray

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589231#Comment_119589231

While that certainly happens. Business requesting stupid things.

A lot of place its the dev's who are actually dictating to the business, and not delivering that was asked.

Its how I fell in to development, we got so fed up waiting for some over engineered behemoth that we started writing our own solutions.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589274#Comment_119589274

Its after hours. Almost anything goes here.

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

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589363#Comment_119589363

Well you don't get common use by people overrides a clinical/academic definition. I didn't say it was correct just how it is used and how people are looking at the lowest paid to define an entire social class as not being able to afford something. It is basically using extremes to say that it was like that for everyone. It clearly wasn't because there was still consumerism

If you want to keep showing your ignorance about the early IT industry and it's off shoots go for it but at least stick with saying you don't know. Statistic are both simple and complicated because they reveal information clearly but the ignorant don't know how to use them thus making it complicated. Like comparing a launch price of an item with interest rate and ignoring price changes over time. I hope you don't work with devising calculations in any software you work on.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589263#Comment_119589263

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.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589429#Comment_119589429

did the calculators cost a grand?

Anyway, as you get older you get nostalgic for your childhood, this appears to be what has happened here

Flinty997

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

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589480#Comment_119589480

and you couldn't even use a vic-20 to take a dick pic

Flinty997

Always classy.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119589429#Comment_119589429

Nope. We were one of the early ones but as prices dropped more and more people got them.

what I think is funny that the poorer kids often had more toys. Guys with huge Star Wars collections and there was no way I would have been gotten this stuff. I had 2 that were gifts from relatives.

the black market in the 80s was huge. All tradesmen were on the dole and working.

So many lower income families to this day buy their kids the latest stuff that they really can’t afford. Growing up I never had brand name clothes but lots of others did and their household incomes were not great. I was jealous to an extent but glad now as I don’t tend towards brands but quality. Generally I see people who can’t afford brands more bothered by them. There are psychological reasons for that about not being perceived as poor by the person themselves where those who have money aren’t so concerned about others perceptions of whether they are poor because the know they aren’t. It is why you get people insulting others about how poor the other person is the only people that really upsets is a person who is poor pretending they aren’t.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588243#Comment_119588243

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.

Apiarist

Once in 1992 I was removing a bootloader virus from a 5.25" diskette using a hex editor. I don't even remember when I saw a computer virus last. People now download ad infested crap themselves. No art left in villainry.