The deterioration of IT

riclad

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.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119590015#Comment_119590015

What all that has do with my comment you quoted about calculators I have no idea.

riclad

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

Badly Drunk Boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119585819#Comment_119585819

I was from a working-class family, my father working in a factory while my mother stayed at home. We got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K (not the pathetic 16K! 😉) in 1984 (I reckon) since the main game played on it was Daley Thompson's Decathalon (because of the '84 Olympics). We had a rented telly, though, as opposed to a bought one. I think it was then that we got our second telly, a 14" black & white! We often had to use that for the computer.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119593993#Comment_119593993

No you are an impossibility according to others.

bucketybuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594037#Comment_119594037

You claimed computers were common among the working class in the early 80's, a claim that is pure nonsense.

It is your faculties that are deteriorating, not IT.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594037#Comment_119594037

Its about €500 in todays money adjusted for inflation.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594067#Comment_119594067

No I didn't. I claimed in the working class area I grew up by 1986 about 50% of my primary school class had a computer in their house. Prices dropped by then so you have some people claiming that they were equivalent to E500 but that is not true as that was the launch price of a 4 year old device by then.

People are making up their own narratives and you believed one of those narratives was what I said.

BrianD3

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.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594223#Comment_119594223

My point was it was cheap even at launch.

You said you got "your" VIC20 in 82. That wasn't cheap. That computers were ubiquitous in  "working class area" to the point that half a class had them. Wasn't my experience. Your experience is as true for you as mine is to me.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594487#Comment_119594487

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.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594559#Comment_119594559

Half the class had them years later is what I said. The whole arguement stems from claims one child was getting a computer which is not what I said either. The households got them often spread among several siblings. Lot of leaps and jumps of people under the assumption nobody could afford them.

Yes we have different expereinces

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594487#Comment_119594487

It was more like by 1990 people had VCRs. I would have said it was rare to not have one by 1992. At least 5 teenagers I knew had them in their bedrooms by 1990 ususally the original VCR the family bought. It may have been different in the midlands as there were probably very few video stores. Xtravision was very important to the development of the market in more rural Ireland. There were lots of video rental places in Dublin so more common.

Flinty997

Xtravision was founded 1979 and rebranded Blockbuster from 1996.

I dunno when we got a VCR but it was post '81 no idea exactly when and we had a colour TV by at least 1980 maybe even earlier.

Ours have no idea what a VCR is, or Video rental. When we recorded stuff digitally on TV we said "Tape it" which baffled our kids.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594868#Comment_119594868

Xtra vision never rebranded to Blockbuster even though they owned it. The brand recognition was too strong so the decided to keep the name. I was working with them during this time. They then sold it to former directors until it died. They were actually the biggest seller of electronics in the country for years as they had so many locations where there was no local competition.

BrianD3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119594773#Comment_119594773

According to the below from the BBC, approx. 65% of UK homes owned a VCR by 1990. Approx. 80% by 1995. This would have been ballpark fot Ireland in my experience except I'd put ownership as a bit lower here. We got ours in 1991 and were far from the last family in the area to do so.

Well into the 90s, the video rental shops rented out equipment (players rather than player/recorders) as well as the tapes themslves.

After 1991 I had a little "business" going renting out "porn" (well mostly snippets from Eurotrash and foreign language films from Channel 4 etc.) to lads in school who either were prevented from using the family VCR to record material or if they did have a VCR, only had the Irish channels. I might start a thread on VCRs and video taping culture to avoid derailing this one any further.

Flinty997

Not sure you can derail an after hours thread.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119593993#Comment_119593993

nowhere did I say that their weren't exceptions but clearly common and 50% is miles from being true

and boards.ie is going to skew it because its full of nerds

5% would be more accurate

Flinty997

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.

BrianD3

I don't know where this data comes from, I presume from the Office of National Statistics although I can't find it on their website. Ownership of home computers in the UK. Only in 2002/2003 did computer ownership reach over 50% of households.

Even if the term "home computer" means something different now than it did in the 1980s, the figures are comparable. Regardless of how the term is defined the vast majority of home computers in homes in the 1980s would have been Commodores etc. not IBM PCs or clones. Whereas by the end of the 90s, a home computer was a PC or an Apple.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/289191/household-penetration-of-home-computers-in-the-uk/

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119595094#Comment_119595094

Again people who don't know how to lookup, read and understand data. Neither of my grandparents had a VCR so that would be 2 households without them. That would have no effect on the people who I was in school with. You are using figures for the entire (different) country which would not be the demographic I was talking about. Go find out the amount of families that had a VCR and then look within that group which were in urban locations where video stores were about. So family households had a higher rate of ownership than the national figure. This is the same as knowing household with children are likely to have a games console but ignoring that and going with the national rate of ownership.

I don't remember any of the video shops renting out players beyond 85 in my area but did see one in 1994ish but that was a very dodgy place in student land.

Flinty997

Well either you are right, or everyone else and all the stats and data or wrong.

These days...

In 2020, gamers aged 25 to 34 years were the largest group of U.S. console gamers, accounting for 27 percent of console gaming audiences in the United States. Teenagers aged 13 to 17 years made 11 percent of U.S. console gamers.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/326035/console-gamers-age/

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119595795#Comment_119595795

Again I hope you never have to derive values from data. A national figure of households includes every household. Young Families are a separate demographic within that national figure. If you don't understand the basics you cannot derive information from the statistics accurately and the data is correct.

So it could just as easily be I am right the stats are right and people don't know how to look up information. I have explained how the data is being misused if you have a counter argument let's hear it otherwise it is willful ignorance

Flinty997

It's Not Impossible, Just Highly Improbable. -- The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

:)

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119595958#Comment_119595958

Yeah somebody with years of experience in statistics and market research is highly likely to know what they are talking about but it’s not impossible an amateur will read the data correctly and prove the expert wrong just highly improbable.

still no counter argument or even an acknowledgment of how stats work.

Flinty997

The horse you're chasing has long gone.

What Stats that "I" posted do you have problem with.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119596003#Comment_119596003

I already addressed you bad stat use and you got confused

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119596020#Comment_119596020

It was simple question. Deflection is not an answer.

maccored

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058262321/the-deterioration-of-it

I work in an IT office of a pretty big company and it seems I'm the only person here who can code, troubleshoot mac, linux, windows and development work. 13 staff and all the rest have MS qualifications - but have never used another OS and if it isnt MS related then are of no help. A bit like being a mechanic that can only fix a mini. I find IT is being changed to admin work where, for example, email - rather than being run from a server maintained by staff - is now a web service an by a large corporate (office 365 etc)

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119596042#Comment_119596042

No it is actually gaslighting. You changed your response from "everybody" else is wrong to what you personally used. I have already addressed that and you can read back but you are making it out like I never told you and that your response was confusion. You have not addressed how you think I am wrong but I have told you.

Though you were going to actually have a conversation but you just want to troll me now.