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Yep! I’m middle aged and an absolute grandma with technology
there is at least one (me)
See world, your stereotype is wrong! Not all of us are programmers!
Some of us are sysadmins
From my experience there are levels of non-technical. I know someone obsessed with cad and has done it plenty but I can’t get them to use email.
Linus Torvalds couldn’t install Debian even though he wrote the Kernel.
so what did he use before he made linux. windows, mac, some unix workstation? does someone install his systems or doe he buy off the shelf? honestly it makes sense for someone to be his IT. I kinda laugh at many of the commercials for things like this one about have your employees do their own payroll. Feels that bussinesses are getting into this lets fire specialists and have these programs that will let our other employees to the various things for themselves and the next iteration is lets have our customers do all the employee work. which is why all of us are like. everything sucks why do I want to even use it (for things being sold.)
Does an admin assistant who mostly works in Microsoft Office products count? The most technical thing I do at work is more advanced calendaring. Although, sometimes I do assist my colleagues with basic tech support and I can follow instructions for a lot of things very well, including IKEA instructions.
Outside of work, I’m interested in techy stuff, but also fight laziness and pretty sunshine outside. I’ll get to setting up my NAS eventually.
Non-technical in regards to how piefed works, non-technical careers, or what?
I mean as in non-technical careers.
Also to clarify, I’m a geologist. I consider that rather technical, but it’s not programming/IT kind of technical. So halfsies?
Ah, gotcha. My hand remains firmly down.
Well, I’m a butcher, so as far as jobs go, about as nontechnical as they come. As far as tech skills go, I’ve been using Arch for more than a decade at this point, can set up and configure most software without issue, I’m just lost as soon as something says “Configuration is easy, just write the config file in $(creator’s_preferred_programming_language)” or when OpenBSD is like “If you want a widget to manage your WiFi connections, just write it yourself.”
I’m about to go back to school to get my teachers degree. Does that count?
I exist. Well, at least I think so.
I use GNU/Linux but I’m really not that much of a geek: I’m now nearing my 60s, and I started using Libre software some 6-8 years ago because I valued my privacy and freedom more than convenience. It’s only after I found a distro that I felt comfortable with that, very quickly indeed, I realized it simply was also a very usable operating system in itself, with great apps. And I have never looked back (and, yep, I still use the same distro to this day). Given the choice, nowadays I would pick GNU/Linux in a heartbeat over Apple (or Microsoft, which I also used to some extend).
And before that?
All my life I had been an Apple customer. Avery happy one, mind you, up until I started realizing that as a customer and as a user I was less and less happy with how they were changing as a company. My first Apple computer dates back to the early 80s and I stayed their customer even when the company went almost bankrupt. I liked Apple (and It also allowed to earn a decent living). It’s Apple themselves that managed to do what no other company managed to do in those 40 years: pushing me away from their business, with their own shitty practice and decisions.
Then, it’s the GNU part in GNU/Linux (the Free Software license, and how it was entirely created to protect the user’s freedoms and rights) that seduced me as a user and made me feel at home using Libre software.
After a few years using my distro of choice, I can (and never hesitate to) write quick bash scripts to make my life simpler, but nothing that would make me win any “prize” or make someone willing to hire me for my remarkable skills :p
You cannot call yourself non-technical when you know bash scripts lol!
As a side-note: maybe it’s not the best idea to always categorize Bash as something reserved to the “geeks” as it puts a barrier of entry where there needs not to be any. It’s merely an app using text (we all learned to handle text as little children, we should be at least a little familiar with words) instead of GUI but it still is just an app. And believe me, if I was able to learn to use it, many more people should be… if only they were not that intimidated by the idea that it’s for geeks ;)
I won’t obsess about the way people want to (not) call me but I can tell you I did not know how to use scripts before… I learned to use them, and I only learned the simple stuff I do actually need. For the rest, I use my computer for writing, browsing the Web, listening to music and watching movies. I post on my blog too. Does that make me a geek? So be it ;)
