7 ms·

Salient tl;dr > The main point I want to make is that you, dear reader, are almost certainly in the top category of computer skills, level 3. In the United Sta

• thinkdoge 10y ago
  I hope in a decade, distribution shifts greatly to more computer literacy.. I get so tilted just thinking about things like... oh why browsers dont have regex search by default... it's because majority of people don't know regex.
  • morecoffee 10y ago
    Not to be morbid, but it definitely will. Young people today will be literate, and the older people will no long be part of the population.
    • flukus 10y ago
      Young people today were brought up on tablets and web apps, they know less about how computers work than people bought up 20 years ago (assuming they had computer access).
      • jonathankoren 10y ago
        But why should they need to? I don't know how my car works, but I drive. I don't know how my camera works, but I use it. I don't know how my TV works, but I use it. You're just old, complaining about how times have changed.
        • 4ndr3vv 10y ago
          > But why should they need to? Because that's what this whole article is discussing: computer skills. Your examples reference appliances; cars drive, cameras take pictures, TVs play stuff. Computers support multiple tasks. Unless you expect all computer based work in the future to be run though bespoke single function apps that have one giant button, people are going to keep needing these skills.
          • jonathankoren 10y ago
            I suggest you look at your phone, because giant button single use apps is exactly what we have. Taking a photo? Tape the picture of the camera, and then tap the giant button. Sending a message? Tap the speech bubble, type out message, and hit the big send button. And so on, and so forth.
            • flukus 10y ago
              And we build workflows around those apps by storing data in files.
            • 4ndr3vv 10y ago
              Yes, but this isn't work. Work is more discrete, less specific; I very much doubt we could have such simple apps that could support the employment of ~1/3 of the population (those in the article with -1 or 0 "computer skills") Work is where complex tasks expose themselves; tasks that sit between theses apps. If you don't have the knowledge or how-to to move between the buttons in the increasingly appified future, you're going to struggle.
        • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
          When you say "don't know how", what do you mean? A driver needs to know several things about how their car works - like use of oil/coolant, what the clutch does, what brakes they have, etc. - in order to drive safely. You seem proud of your ignorance of these things?
          • 10y ago
    • magila 10y ago
      I'm not so sure the next generation is going to be significantly more computer literate. With the trend towards curated devices (read: smart phones and tablets) general purpose computer skills are being pushed back into the niche they used to occupy in decades past.
      • thesimpsons1022 10y ago
        yeah. my teenage cousin has no knowledge about computers other than using them to play Minecraft and watch Netflix. even his typing skills are poor.
        • Warp__ 10y ago
          However, in the future he may want to install/create mods for Minecraft, which would start him on the path for further skills.
      • kagamine 10y ago
        And certain areas in tech are harder to enter too. Web-dev a decade ago was easy to start, now every site you might be familiar with when starting out uses the RIDICULOUS_OVERKILL.js framework, SASS/LESS because CSS is for amateurs!, OBSCURE backend and THIS_WEEK's database. Plus npm and these 600 plugins to make development "easier". Makes spaghetti php of bygone years look like lesson in modernism.
    • tylerhou 10y ago
      Age does not determine literacy. This gap will persist through at least the next 20, 30 years, if not longer. I'm a senior at a private high school that's ranked top 3 in the nation. If I went up to someone and asked them what a regex was, nine times out of ten they wouldn't be able to tell me. Almost all people (who are otherwise are some of the most brilliant people I have met/will ever meet) wouldn't be able to reinstall Windows/macOS if their boot sector was corrupted.
      • exolymph 10y ago
        Intelligence seems to often be domain-specific, or interest-specific. Intelligence is an amalgamation of deeper-than-average knowledge and natural aptitude, so that makes sense.
      • robryan 10y ago
        Regex is interesting because almost anyone that works with documents and spreadsheets would benefit from it. Similar to programming though, even as a non technical person at a tech company you would definitely encounter situations where some simple code/db queries would help a great deal.
    • schoen 10y ago
      I used to think computer literacy was obviously increasing over time, because that was the narrative about the future that I heard (computers are becoming more important, people are getting more exposure to them → clearly people will understand them better and better), but now I'm not so sure!
      • frobozz 10y ago
        Given that narrative, it should be increasing in the sense of getting more people off the floor and on to the bottom rung. There's no reason to expect that it should be increasing in the sense of a higher percentage of people reaching the higher rungs. It's a literacy vs. fluency thing. Improvements in global communication and travel should mean that more of us can speak a few foreign languages in the sense that we can ask directions to the station and buy a beer, but it doesn't necessarily mean that significantly more of us would be able to read and discuss the details of the major works of literature in those languages.
    • thisrod 10y ago
      That doesn't necessarily follow. Cars are much more important now than in the 1940s. OTOH, "motor literacy"—in the sense of knowing how cars worked and being able to keep them running—might have been a lot more common back then.
      • mvindahl 10y ago
        That's an excellent insight, actually! A century ago, cars were fairly simple devices which required skill to start and operate. These days they are highly complex and hide their complexity nicely behind a dashboard. Once the abstraction leaks, however slightly, we call the pros. Or at least I do. Computer technology follows the same trajectory because most people purchase technology for solving tasks, not because they have a craving for complexity. So "computer literacy" is about as important to society as "motor literacy". Common sense is as important as ever, though. I.e. having a repository of background knowledge to be able to detect bullshit, fake news, and propaganda on the internet. That's the kind of old school literacy that we need.
        • thmsths 10y ago
          It might be some kind of bias but I have always felt like when it comes to cars average Joe is at least capable of changing a tire, but when it comes to computers the very same person does not even seem to try.
          • throwanem 10y ago
            Changing a tire takes some elbow grease, but the nature of the problem and the steps involved in the task are all pretty obvious. It might take 20 minutes or a half hour if the lugs are really tight, but you can grasp the whole problem in just a few seconds' thought. Little if anything to do with computers manages to be so intuitive.
  • executesorder66 10y ago
    Even if it decreases, there's no reason why regex search shouldn't be added, by enabling it in some setting somewhere for those who want it.
    • crooked-v 10y ago
      A bunch of people accidentally enable that option, all their searches break, and they publicly lambast the software for having stupid broken searches.
      • thesimpsons1022 10y ago
        perhaps include it in the developer tools or something
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      There is a reason. I don't know what it is exactly, but it is the one that makes browser vendors continuously remove features. RSS icons, anyone?
  • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    Why should the majority of people know regex? It sacrifices all clarity for extreme compactness, and the vast majority of users don't need its power. I'd love to see more powerful, versatile searches generally available--booleans, date ranges, so on and so forth--but regex is ridiculous overkill for most people's use cases. I think this is one of the major stumbling blocks for computer literacy efforts--too many proponents define "literacy" not as "useful, applicable skills" but "the exact tools that I'm familiar with, and nothing else." Elsewhere in this thread there's people saying that command line skills are necessary to understand concepts like "files" and "programs".
    • nxc18 10y ago
      To make matters worse, most programmers don't really know regex well enough to use it without reference, and even if they think they do, they probably don't know the problem domain or the nature of their regex to get it bug-free. See basically all attempts at parsing email addresses in regex for an example of this. Then you have the gotchas... E.g. most implementations have performance issues in many scenarios, leading to situations like when SO went down a few months ago.
    • flukus 10y ago
      > I'd love to see more powerful, versatile searches generally available--booleans, date ranges, so on and so forth--but regex is ridiculous overkill for most people's use cases. To do that you're going to reinvent regex, usually with a clunkier interface that has to be re-implemented everywhere. Or you'll come up with a text based system like google, which is again it's own domain specific language. Edit - in fact, I just remembered we have such a tool where I work. Because the support folks were deemed to be too stupid to learn regex we created a custom "language" that turned out to be a bastardized, dumbed down version of them. Instead of the support staff learning a skill for life, they only learn our abomination.
      • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        > Or you'll come up with a text based system like google, which is again it's own domain specific language. I was thinking of Google's system specifically, yes. I use regex a lot. It's extremely powerful, and when you really need it then nothing else will do. It's also phenomenally obtuse, it takes a real time investment to become fluent in it, and 95% of users will never need its power. People aren't ignorant of regex because they're stupid or uneducated. They're ignorant of regex because they don't need it. They wouldn't use it if they had access to it, because they have better things to do with their time. They'll get more done if you give them a tool whose power-to-usability balance is actually suited to their needs. Regarding your support staff, perhaps they did in fact need regex despite that decision, or perhaps your custom language was not the right choice for their needs. That doesn't mean that the typical user has any use for regex.
  • beachstartup 10y ago
    > majority of people don't know regex the majority of people who call themselves programmers and sysadmins don't know regex.
    • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Seriously? Any support for that statement? Or do you mean "aren't expert at"?
      • beachstartup 10y ago
        srsly.
  • michaelbuckbee 10y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people browsing don't know that it's even a standard feature to search within the text of a webpage.
    • kazagistar 10y ago
      "You pick the search button from the menu on the top, just like copy and paste, right?"
      • AstralStorm 10y ago
        No, that's a web search. To page search from there, you have to click the icon and choose search in page first.
    • mrob 10y ago
      In Firefox it's called "Find", not "Search". I think this is a better name because it distinguishes it from web searches, which most people will think of when you say "search".
    • dri_ft 10y ago
      I accidentally put a friend of mine off Wikipedia a few years ago by using Ctrl+F on it in front of her. She assumed it was a feature of the website, not of the browser, and thought it looked too complicated.
  • yread 10y ago
    Regex is actually a pretty good example. I think something like 99.9% of people get bitten by it. I'm using them for like 10 years and I rarely get the more complex ones working on the first try - not just because of the incosistencies between Perl, Js, .NET, sed, shell (extra escapes) and Python, but also stuff like look ahead/behinds or just plain logical errors which are pretty hard to spot
  • tempodox 10y ago
    Ha, I would already consider it progress if the Preview app on OS X wouldn't just ignore any non-alphabetic characters I put in the search field of a PDF.
• to3m 10y ago
  I think a better TL;DR is the second paragraph here: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/average-computer-skills-edition.html#comment-159546454 http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/ave...