> Love the HN crowd here explaining that staying still on old tech full of security holes is a-ok. :)
It’s disheartening when a forum full of supposed tech enthusiasts starts to morph into a bunch of paranoid tech Luddites. That is what, imho, killed slashdot. Every post was full of comments slamming anything new. Eventually it just got toxic and boring. Who wants to hear a bunch of paranoid outliers brag about their 8 year old phone on a forum like this?
The tech industry is constantly changing. If you can’t handle it, you should go into something else...
Almost nobody is slamming new things. They're slamming the OS update process. And it very much deserves it. It's not a criticism of the new versions themselves.
And keeping up with tech doesn't require constant purchases. You're not a Luddite because you use something for more than three years, for crying out loud.
Its harsh because there is no way to sugar coat it. This post is full of people bragging about running 9 year old phones with ancient highly vulnerable operating systems. On the same forum that has people bragging about being child geniuses and making posts like “I’m assuming that just by reading HN you have an above average intelligence”.
No. You don’t get to claim you are “above average intelligence” when you brag about downloading OS updates off sketchy “community” forums and then make posts like “better than some faceless corporation”. That isn’t intelligent. That is just being stupid.
Ever hear of the dunning kruger effect? Some folks need to go read about it and then smack themselves upside the head.
Seriously. Paranoid tech ludditism is an eye rolling, tedious, boring circlejerk. Go back to your green screen gramps— I’m sure it is good enough for anything but I like my 4K color monitor, thanks.
...Keep that stuff out of tech forums because it is cancer. Sla
However, a large number of people on HN are software engineers who make their living writing software for these devices; it would seem like a crowd that loves tech like React “Native” might consider the latest devices somewhat important to their business. If developers are running old devices and old OSes, then it follows that they aren’t developing around the latest capabilities because they themselves don’t use the latest capabilities. For a “progressive” crowd, it sure seems like there are quite a few reactionaries.
This “keep my older device” argument makes perfect sense if you are an end-consumer but it makes no sense if your business is building software. Software developers ought to consider it a minimum requirement to be on the cutting edge. We should be leading the way and not doggedly hanging on to older tech.
If we were house painters, then running a 5 year old device makes no difference, but if we are supposed to be building the future, it’s illogical to be obsessed, almost to a hipster-degree with running outdated equipment.
Just because I am a software engineer, doesn’t mean I am willing to spend more than 600 euros every three years for the privilege of having an updated device.
That are more important things in life.
If Google wants us to actually use the latest features, then they should force OEM to upgrade to Treble and push to their devices.
Not to force us to buy an Oreo device, hoping that this time around OEMs will actually push updates on ALL devices.
> If developers are running old devices and old OSes, then it follows that they aren’t developing around the latest capabilities because they themselves don’t use the latest capabilities.
And what are these latest capabilities? As an user, the only difference between Android 6 and 7 that I noticed are redesigned notifications. Between Android 7 and 8, I don't even have an idea. I don't care for the latest Google or Apple assistant; so this all is not enough of reason to drop 600-100 EUR on a new phone.
Hand-waving about "latest capabilities" is even less of a reason.
It’s disheartening when a forum full of supposed tech enthusiasts starts to morph into a bunch of paranoid tech Luddites. That is what, imho, killed slashdot. Every post was full of comments slamming anything new. Eventually it just got toxic and boring. Who wants to hear a bunch of paranoid outliers brag about their 8 year old phone on a forum like this?
The tech industry is constantly changing. If you can’t handle it, you should go into something else...