Old Fogey Mode

These days I find myself more and more trying to explain to people why some things are done the way they're done, when they (the people) would do it differently. I find myself explaining that at the time these things were done there were no mobile phones, no digital cameras, no CDs, no GPS, modems ran at 300baud if you were lucky, the WorldWideWeb hadn't been invented, and so on. At least in my day there was such a thing as email, even if addresses were of the form eek!swim!moria!janet and you had to know the names of the machines through which messages were routed.

I now warn people that I'm going into OldFogeyMode, and that these are not simply "When I were a lad" sort of reminiscences, but contain real information that may be of use.

Sometimes it helps.

The above is the original, the following is discussion. I'd like to clarify the original so the discussion is preempted. For now, the discussion continues ...

So us young whippersnappers should also warn you old fogeys when we are about to launch into the merits of the latest fad?

Education must work both ways for maximum benefit. If you can explain why one method of working is better and let us Old Fogeys understand it in our own way, perhaps we can use our experience of older methods to hone the newer ones. Yes, warn us, and explain. Sometimes the old ones have something to offer.

yes it must, and the way you say things is key to it i.e. no one should argue from authority. do you not find that stating that you are in OldFogeyMode just signals the listener to start ignoring you?

Not any more. I managed an "I told you so" in a very expensive set of circumstances, and managed also to save the project. Now when I say I'm going into OFM they realise that I'm trying to tell them something that might be important.

"i told you so" gives you the trackrecord to argue againt doing something bad (assuming conditions are the same) thefore you are allowed to use the OldFogeyMode, so the young whippersnapper should need to build a prototype or find an example from outside the current scope of the old fogeys and demonstrate an improvement to be able to apply the young whippersnapper mode

I'm sorry, but I can't make sense of this. I can't find the point you're trying to make, nor the evidence to support it. I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to state your point and the evidence separately.

i was trying to point out that both youngsters and oldies argue from experience and both need to prove themselves to be taken seriously. i guess the point was that OldFogeyMode sounded to me like a defence against bad practices where as the young whippersnapper is intrested in introducing improved practices i.e. the difference is not really age but intent. i'm not sure what evidence i could give you for this as it's just my interpretation of your definition + my definition. perhaps it better if the previous bit is removed if it's confusing

OldFogeyMode is absolutely not a defence against bad practice. It's a warning that what follows contains information, even if it sounds like I'm just saying how much better (actually often different, sometimes significantly worse) things were in the past. It's a "heads-up" that this may sound like an old-fart rabbiting on about the past, but there is a relevant point being made.

ok OldFogeyMode is the warning, but the advice given when in OldFogeyMode is generally not to do something stupid? perhaps not always though

Not always. Usually when I'm in OFM it's to say - my experience suggests that what you are doing sounds good, but there are circumstances you haven't considered. My best example involves the catastrophic failure of cash registers during the busiest time of the year.

My experience is that YWSs often don't argue from experience, but believe that their ideas are going to work. This seems similar to beleiving that one has just found the last bug. In those cases where YWSs are arguing from experience, their experiences are often more limited than mine. Sometimes it's the only advantage I have over them, but I have seen more, and I want them to benefit from it.

well it is a problem when anyone argues about something they don't have the right experience with, i agree it happens too much but all you can do is try not to do it yourself, the difficulty is that it is hard to know if you know enough to make the right choice. i think this works both ways round as a YWS may have more experience than an OF in a particular area, although the OF should have the advantage on average as their total expereince will be greater so in most cases the OF should "win"

I agree completely that knowing you don't know enough is the hard part. That's why having a range of people with a range of experiences is so valuable - for any given part, fact or item there's more chance of someone knowing it.

The OFM heads-up is to say that although the anecdote may come from the dim and distant past, like 1985, never-the-less the truths contained therein may, indeed often are, still relevant.

It's too early yet, but I'd like to turn this into a DocumentMode page at some point. Your comments have been useful.