Hi Moray,
Moray Allan wrote:
There's been some discussion elsewhere about how young people's
experience of computers has changed over the years, and how this might
interact with our success in recruiting young people into Debian. I
would estimate that the conversation focused on 16-20 year-olds, as it
started after someone pointed to the graph of developers' claimed ages at
http://people.debian.org/~spaillard/developers-age-histogramm/devs-age-histo.2013-01-01.png
<http://people.debian.org/%7Espaillard/developers-age-histogramm/devs-age-histo.2013-01-01.png>
A few points from that discussion (not trying to be an exhaustive
summary): - The conversation wondered how much the number of younger
people coming to Debian might have reduced due to changes in wider
computer use/culture. Certainly, programming languages used to be an
advertised part of the system, where now they are typically an
optional add-on, hidden, or effectively unavailable to the users of
certain types of device. - It was also pointed out that we have
several groups of Debian contributors who came from successful local
projects, e.g. university computer groups. It seems that many such
university groups themselves recruit fewer new members than they used
to, so the change may not only be that Debian gets fewer of the people
trained in them. (One factor mentioned for their own recruitment
trouble was that many students have less reason than a few years ago
to spend time around computer labs.) - Another factor that makes a
difference to how young people spend their time on computers may be
the availability of always-on internet access. I know that, once I had
a computer at home, but before I had any kind of internet connection
there, I started to do programming projects to fill in my school
holidays; perhaps nowadays I would have spent the time chatting
online, or using the computer to collaborate on something productive
other than programming. - A change mentioned that might be more
positive is that it's now much easier to get programs distributed to
people who will find them useful. While we might not like app stores
etc. and the typical lack of source code, this still gives people a
greater motivation to create software (including a greater chance that
it will reach others who need something to solve the same problem)
than existed for most amateur programmers before. If you agree, as I
would, that it's useful for Debian to recruit more young people --
they often have a lot of spare time, and a lot of enthusiasm, and good
connections to influence and recruit others who might be interested in
helping -- then what do you think Debian could do differently to
encourage this? How much do you think is due to general factors like
those above, and how much due to changes in Debian and in how it's
perceived?
How much of what? Your question may be interesting, but I don't know
what discussion you're referring to and the only data above simply shows
the age of members. The graph is nice, but it doesn't show the age of
members at the time they are recruited, and even less how that age
changes with time. If we actually have such data, I'm sure I wouldn't be
the only one to appreciate.