It is more basic than that:

"It just works" is terrible for developing computer skills.

It is damned convenient for the most part, but it removes the opportunity to have an issue and solve it, developing your troubleshooting skills.

Then we come to the lack of verbosity of modern operating systems and programs.

"Oops, there is an issue, please wait while we solve it..." is an absolutely terrible error message.

"Error 0x001147283b - Fatal error" is a far better error message.

I'd argue the iPad is the bigger offender personally. They're blaming Chromebooks because that's often what schools provided, but the same exact timing existed before with iMacs in classrooms all through the 90s and early 00s for millennials despite Windows being by far the more common real world OS they would need to know in the workplace.

But when it comes to portable devices the iPhone and iPad are king, that's what young people want and often what they're given. And those operate nearly exactly the same as a Chromebook. Toss everything into a cloud bucket, no user-facing folder structures to learn, everything locked down with limited access and customization. A take it or leave it approach to user interaction.

Also, the total number of Chromebooks sold worldwide is tiny compared with phones and tablets. Most kids have probably never seen a Chromebook, but virtually every kid has held and used a phone, a tablet or both.

If you want to blame Google, blame Android, not Chromebooks.

Yeah Apple was pushing their "BSD for morons" laptops om schools long before chromebooks were a thing.

Yeah, and I feel like you could play around with javascript to make stuff happen in the browser on a chrome book, can't you?

I'm old enough that it was BASIC I played around with when I was a kid. Not a language I ever used since, but the important thing is to get a feel for logic, make some incredibly stupid choices when making a program and learn from that. If a kid wants to play around on a computer to make it do something they created, I think they'll find a way.

Also AI can be helpful when starting on a new language. Yeah I had to learn the hard way by googling stuff and getting the syntax wrong, and using a lot of guess work. There's still a learning curve before you just know the syntax without stopping to think or asking the AI, but it was that way before, it was just googling things you gotta do before you really know it. And before that a lot more trial and error to figure it out.

Yeah it's a fucking abysmal take. More kids had access to the internet and computers because of Chromebooks, without them they'd have had nothing - maybe once an hour in the computer lab each week, assuming they even had one.

Prior to Chromebooks, the most a school could do was "a computer in every classroom". That was it, that was the ambition in the early 2000's and even then most schools failed.

What happened was tech companies made computers easier to use by hiding a lot of that complexity. And average humans were fine with that because shit should just work.

The arguments being raised here about a loss of skills are the same arguments boomers used against millennials because they didn't know how to do DIY and shit like that.

The blame is always squarely on the education system. That system is supposed to set kids up with the skills they need to make it in the wold and tech literacy is one of many, many areas that is hugely underserved.

Not to mention that Chromebooks are Linux (so can be modded for basically anything), but these days have official native support for sideloading any Linux distro you please. All it takes is a flashed USB drive and one button click, then you're totally unrestricted and out of ChromeOS.

If any kid wanted to, they could do that far easier than I could when I was in school. If they become adults, buy a Chromebook, and choose to do nothing with it other than watch YouTube, then it has absolutely nothing to do with the technology that was provided to them during school.

What did you jailbreak your ipod with, though? Was it a chromebook?

What are the advantages of a jailbroken kindle? I’ve thought about it but there isn’t really anything I lack on mine.

I jailbroke my Wii

Yeah I've done this too. Beyond easy. There's literally a website with step-by-step instructions. I imagine it's the same for Kindle, etc.

Googling how to jailbreak something is not the same as having an open and functional development environment.

The Chromebook does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a cheap notebook which runs Chrome. And it's fairly competent at that task. It's exactly as advertised. The problem only arises when people think that the ability to use a Chromebook is acceptable as a substitute for the ability to use a normal computer.

I completely agree. The OP ignores the fact that Chromebooks run on Linux, and are essentially a gateway to it. There's even official support for sideloading any Linux distro of choosing.

One of my first exposures to technology was an iPod touch, and I went on to become a software engineer. Maybe it was the time? Perhaps I’ve just become older and grumpier, but technology once felt inviting to me now feels oversaturated and unnecessary. Like do we really need ChatGPT? Does it really make things better or just solve other problems that technology created?

Good, I’m glad nobody is learning these things anymore. I couldn’t care less if someone doesn’t learn HTML and CSS.

I agree, and I think it takes almost MAGA level self-absorption to contrive this interpretation of events. What actually happened was somebldy wanted to sell products and came up with products people wanted. And that's not an all-encompassing endorsement of Google and everything Google has ever done because I'm "on Google's side", it's a criticism of OP's imagination.

For me it was Backtrack Linux on a bootable CD-RW. Set the Windows wallpaper as my background and nobody ever noticed. Man those were the days!

The real take is to get kids into PC gaming from a young age. Kids are super patient with each other and now my kid is doing things like installing mods for games that he plays. It's also massively improved his reading which is mostly how I learned English myself.

Being a CS major (even a good one) isn't a solid measure of tech literacy. CS still suffers from the "do this arbitrary thing so you can get credit"; along with other majors and American schools at large.

Actually I've seen first hand the dumbing down of curriculum in my CS program via my younger peers' stories, and helping them with their coursework. And it's 100% due to low tech literacy.

Edit: grammar.

Not Android, Linux. I was trying to figure out why there are so few Android tablets and read that Google didn't have complete control with Android. That's why Samsung and HTC and others put their own overlay on it. They didn't want that for laptops/bigger devices, so for ChromeOS they locked it down and told the hardware manufacturers "no, it's ChromeOS. You can't fiddle with it. If you want to make Chromebooks, these are the minimum specs and this is the keyboard you must use. If not, fuck off."

These kind of takes have the usual format of "anything a company does is bad" and is profit driven. They forget that there is something called marketing and optics behind it.

I feel like this analogy is perfect, but not just for the reason you used it.

Car manufacturers making cars easier to use and require less maintenance is great. Your point in regards to people just not needing the old skills because of that is spot on.

But car manufacturers have also been making intentional design decisions to make accessing things under the hood require speciality tools or needlessly complex when it is needed. There are cars where you can't replace headlights without removing the whole front bumper assembly. That isn't the fault of the owner/user, and it's not a case of "improvements make old skills obsolete". It's design intentionally hostile to the goal of allowing owners to even attempt it themselves. Scummy as hell, and we should be holding these companies responsible.

Google has done and is doing the same thing with Chromebooks and Android. File system? Folders to organize my files? What?

And now we have people who don't know how to operate their car's headlights, and people who can't find files if they aren't in the "recent documents" list.

Yup. I'm teaching my son CAD/CAM with a 3d printer, low level programming and electronics with Arduino, he helps with mechanical and electrical repairs. Linux with the home server. Fishing, hunting, and camping. Wasn't ready this year for steers or chickens but hopefully will next year. Wife is teaching him how to cook, (I'm a decent cook, but she is amazing). Simple sewing. Basic carpentry. And so on.

School isn't going to teach him much of this, but we will.

Wanted to say the same thing you said, but with actual literacy. Books exist, but the desire to be literate is not there.

It's more like blaming bumper cars for not being actual cars. Sure, bumper cars are more reliable and simple to use but the "use" is severely limited.