I'm sorry, but if you don't know how to read simple hex numbers for colours, and you're unwilling to learn, you probably shouldn't be in this game.
It's like when people complain that they failed to install desktop Linux in the last couple of years - sure in the 90s that was a very valid complaint, and early last decade it was tricksy too. But now? It says more about them.
TBH, in 90s I just pushed disk[ette] into the drive and booted into installer. Today I have to go through all the DVD-ISO-to-USB3-EFI hassle before it even boots. And then it still has no idea of how to install into that single partition that I created.
The fact that users cannot just install the OS and use it after 2+ decades says more about OS, not about users.
I mean people on here, who are supposed to be technically minded. I'm not really sure what hassle you're talking about, but I was very specific in talking about people who proudly claim to have failed, here.
My mother? Like most people, she might have trouble, but she probably doesn't even know what an OS is. A hacker news poster in 2017 should know better.
I think you're mistaking tech-minded with linux-experienced. I am definitely tech-minded (unix & c are main tags) and was linux-experienced. Solved any issue in minutes, hours or days. Now I can't make my soundcard work in Debian because: A). I don't know the stack anymore. Pulseaudio, alsa, setting managers, etc. B). I don't want to dive in there again to get more amazing brand new details about how sound meant to be played at modern days on my 11yo PC with AC97 chip.
I was like that too. Losers can't install, tune, [read hex colors,] etc. Then you realize that your time is finite, that your overall awareness has FOV parameter, that issues never end, they evolve. If you focus too much, you're solving local problems that should not be there in the first place, and these are not yours. So, things are wrong, not your FOV. Fix things, not yourself. Know hex for hardware, not for colors. That's what your parent's rant is about.
No, I'm not, and please read again, I was very specific.
If you can't install linux in 2017, you can't really consider yourself technically able.
I said nothing about getting every piece of hardware going. I said nothing about tuning anything, I said nothing about resolving issues or fixing things yourself.
If, between the big distros (and particularly ubuntu) you can't even get it installed in 2017, when linux in various forms is so widespread, and the installers are really not much more complex than the windows one, you have problems. I've watched linux installs go from hideously complex beasts invokving typing in monitor tolerances and manually selecting arcane package-sets to try and make anything work to something supremely easy. Are you really going to argue that installing Ubuntu on generic hardware is sooooo difficult we shouldn't expect someone who is supposedly into tech and a capable programmer to be able to click through an installer? Really? Because to me that's an expectation on a par with writing fizz-buzz,the lowest possible barrier to entry.
The parent rant is trying to say that kids today don't need hex, and that it's a fuddy-duddy old man skill reserved for those who grew up coding in assembly on 8-bit processors. As this very topic shows,I don't think that's the case.
I'll skip linux part because it goes nowhere without considering that specific case with someone on HN who failed. But doesn't your last sentence involve circular logic?
It's like when people complain that they failed to install desktop Linux in the last couple of years - sure in the 90s that was a very valid complaint, and early last decade it was tricksy too. But now? It says more about them.