Is IT getting too easy?
Back in the day, when you had to figure out computing for yourself, you were rewarded with a keen understanding of fundamentals
Follow @pveneziaA few recent situations have led me to believe that IT may be getting too easy. Maybe not for those of us who routinely work in the deepest recesses of network and system architecture, but too easy for those who are just entering the game. You know, "the kids."
I didn't get my hands on a computer until I was 10 or so -- and then I couldn't get enough. Every step of the way, I had to figure out how everything worked by trial and error or by asking the few people I knew who were also into computers. It was frequently a slow and painful process, but I learned an enormous amount along the way. When I first connected to the Internet, gopher and Usenet ruled the roost, and the Internet itself was basically an expansion of computerdom: Either you knew enough to use it or you didn't.
[ Paul Venezia serves up a healthy portion of his hard-bought networking expertise in InfoWorld's Networking Deep Dive. ]
Even after HTTP, Mosaic, and the beginnings of the "public" Internet, it was still the Wild West. There were no guarantees, no Google, and you were highly likely to be eaten by a grue at any time. Linux, Perl, PHP, and MySQL were infants, Windows was the computing equivalent of nitroglycerin, and Solaris ruled the back-end world. Blood, sweat, and tears were required to do anything of substance. Tens of thousands of mental foundations were laid, and the folks that persevered and brought computing to the next level earned their stripes. Those foundations weren't the kind that can be taught -- they had to be experienced.
Juxtapose that with what a 10-year-old encounters in 2010. Basically everything Just Works (even Windows most of the time). Want to install Linux on a random desktop or laptop? The vast majority of the time you won't even have to download a single driver. Want to write some cool script? Chances are that someone already has, and you can find the code in Google. Copy, paste, and you're done.
Have some odd hardware or software problem? Google again and find your answer in a few minutes. While the result may be the same, the path is drastically shorter, and by taking those shortcuts, you lose the whys and wherefores of the situation and never develop a chunk of the foundation.
That doesn't mean that the information to build that core isn't available. It's extremely available. In fact, with the right motivation, a solid IT foundation can be built in a far shorter time now than at any other time in history -- for the willing learner. Human nature has a tendency to avoid the intricacies of a solution as long as it works.
