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I see the car analogy used regularly and I think it’s completely off base. A much better analogy for computer skills is literacy and numeracy. We don’t tell peo

I see the car analogy used regularly and I think it’s completely off base. A much better analogy for computer skills is literacy and numeracy. We don’t tell people “don’t bother learning how to read, you can listen to audio books on audible!” just as we shouldn’t tell people that computer programming is only for professional software developers (or anything else involving intensive skill mastery related to computers).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 7y ago
Being able to use a computer is like being able to drive a car. After a little practice and learning a few rules most cars are pretty easy to just get in and drive. It takes a little more effort to learn to drive stick, and formula one cars are only driven by professionals. Computer programming is like building, modding, or repairing your car — you can learn but it’s an activity done basically only by hobbyists and professionals. Troubleshooting computer issues is like car maintenance. Everyone can fill the tank with gas, most people can change a tire, fewer can change their oil, and fewer still can jump a battery.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Pretty much right. Yes its useful for almost anyone to know programming but we can't learn everything in the world that's useful. A carpenter is probably thinking its crazy I can't build my own bench and have to pay loads more for someone else to do it.
  - Swizec 7y ago
    You can make a bench with 4 cinder blocks and a plank. Now a good bench ... I guess the equivalent in computing would be spreadsheets? You can automate and build awesome things but god help you if you wanna move it somewhere else
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      As long as such a bench gets the job done, the person making it wins. Similarly with spreadsheets. Sure, they get ugly. But they allow to get work done better and faster that it would be otherwise (if it was done at all). The alternative usually involves finding a ready-made domain-specific application and adjusting your (or your company's) workflow to it, or pestering someone to make it for you, both of which are frequently bad trade-offs. It takes time to arrange, often siloes you off your data, you have lots of irrelevant stuff to learn besides your task, and it prevents you from iterating on your workflow. I'd say the last one - iteration on workflow - is the biggest source of Excel (ab)use. Hard to lock down your process in a domain-specific tool if the details of that process are fuzzy and subject to change.
      - baroffoos 7y ago
        The idea of a house full of hacked together cinder block and chipboard furniture doesn't thrill me. It might work for a workshop but I think I will just pay for the expert made stuff in my house.
- sedachv 7y ago
  Those are really poor analogies. What you call "using a computer" means using a pre-made application that turns the computer into an appliance. Instead of making inappropriate analogies (IMO usually a redundant phrase), look at where the tasks fit into Piaget's model of cognitive development.¹ Driving a car is the sensorimotor stage. Proficient computer use requires a high capability of the formal operational stage. The bad news is that a lot of people will never attain the formal operational stage, and what is even worse is that the percentage of people that do is falling.² The results of this study are not surprising. The take-away should be that it is pointless and counter-productive to try to dumb down the user interface for applications in domains that require a high level of cognitive development. No amount of picture icons and hamburger menus is going to make up for an inability to reason abstractly. What it will do is make it impossible for anyone to ever use the application efficiently. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive... ² https://oneofus.la/files/flynn2018.pdf https://oneofus.la/files/flynn2018.pdf
scarface74 7y ago
And car mechanics would look at you just as derisively for not knowing how to fix your own car. They would also say that fixing a car isn’t just for professionals. The average person doesn’t need to know how to program any more than the average programmer needs to know assembly (I do). Everyone is ignorant to someone who doesn’t knows something that they do.
- rsnor 7y ago
  Is it fair to say that because there will always be more specialized skills to be learned, that none should be learned? Everyone may not need to know how to repair their car, but to perform basic, routine maintenance on it and to learn driving technique as intended is something that, when neglected, can cause major inefficiencies.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Specialization says just the opposite. That everyone should specialize in a combination of what they are good at and there is a demand because it is much more efficient and trade those goods and services that they specialize in for goods and services that they don’t. In the modern era instead of trading directly, we use money as an intermediary. Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize. Why is car maintenance anything that everyone should know and not plumbing, electrical work or carpentry?
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
      > Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize. That's simply bullshit. If you specialize on only installing tires on cars, but not removing them, you have specialized more than a business that swaps your tires, but you have created massive inefficiency by requiring your customers to somehow move around vehicles without tires for you to install tires for them. There are particular circumstances where specialization increases efficiency, and there are (obviously) other circumstances where specialization decreases efficiency, so it's nonsensical to just say that specializing is always the more efficient choice, which is why all your analogies fail: You use an example where specialization (arguably) increases efficiency, then you completely fail to explain how computer skills fall into the same category as that example, and then you conclude that therefore it is in the same category.
ben509 7y ago
People do disregard numeracy if all the, "LOL, your teacher said you wouldn't always have a calculator in your pocket" memes are anything to go by.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I guess a lot of those people end up in poverty, though probably not as many as it would seem it should, because the society does a lot of work to protect unwillingly innumerate people from exploitation, which makes it easier for lazy people to disregard numeracy without consequences. Still, numeracy is not being able to multiply a bunch of 3-digit numbers on a piece of paper. Numeracy is primarily knowing which numbers to multiply, or add together, or subtract from each other to learn something you need, and that you can do this in the first place.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Spivak 7y ago

Being able to use a computer is like being able to drive a car. After a little practice and learning a few rules most cars are pretty easy to just get in and drive. It takes a little more effort to learn to drive stick, and formula one cars are only driven by professionals. Computer programming is like building, modding, or repairing your car — you can learn but it’s an activity done basically only by hobbyists and professionals. Troubleshooting computer issues is like car maintenance. Everyone can fill the tank with gas, most people can change a tire, fewer can change their oil, and fewer still can jump a battery.

baroffoos 7y ago
Pretty much right. Yes its useful for almost anyone to know programming but we can't learn everything in the world that's useful. A carpenter is probably thinking its crazy I can't build my own bench and have to pay loads more for someone else to do it.
- Swizec 7y ago
  You can make a bench with 4 cinder blocks and a plank. Now a good bench ... I guess the equivalent in computing would be spreadsheets? You can automate and build awesome things but god help you if you wanna move it somewhere else
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    As long as such a bench gets the job done, the person making it wins. Similarly with spreadsheets. Sure, they get ugly. But they allow to get work done better and faster that it would be otherwise (if it was done at all). The alternative usually involves finding a ready-made domain-specific application and adjusting your (or your company's) workflow to it, or pestering someone to make it for you, both of which are frequently bad trade-offs. It takes time to arrange, often siloes you off your data, you have lots of irrelevant stuff to learn besides your task, and it prevents you from iterating on your workflow. I'd say the last one - iteration on workflow - is the biggest source of Excel (ab)use. Hard to lock down your process in a domain-specific tool if the details of that process are fuzzy and subject to change.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      The idea of a house full of hacked together cinder block and chipboard furniture doesn't thrill me. It might work for a workshop but I think I will just pay for the expert made stuff in my house.
sedachv 7y ago
Those are really poor analogies. What you call "using a computer" means using a pre-made application that turns the computer into an appliance. Instead of making inappropriate analogies (IMO usually a redundant phrase), look at where the tasks fit into Piaget's model of cognitive development.¹ Driving a car is the sensorimotor stage. Proficient computer use requires a high capability of the formal operational stage. The bad news is that a lot of people will never attain the formal operational stage, and what is even worse is that the percentage of people that do is falling.² The results of this study are not surprising. The take-away should be that it is pointless and counter-productive to try to dumb down the user interface for applications in domains that require a high level of cognitive development. No amount of picture icons and hamburger menus is going to make up for an inability to reason abstractly. What it will do is make it impossible for anyone to ever use the application efficiently. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive... ² https://oneofus.la/files/flynn2018.pdf https://oneofus.la/files/flynn2018.pdf

scarface74 7y ago

And car mechanics would look at you just as derisively for not knowing how to fix your own car. They would also say that fixing a car isn’t just for professionals. The average person doesn’t need to know how to program any more than the average programmer needs to know assembly (I do). Everyone is ignorant to someone who doesn’t knows something that they do.

rsnor 7y ago
Is it fair to say that because there will always be more specialized skills to be learned, that none should be learned? Everyone may not need to know how to repair their car, but to perform basic, routine maintenance on it and to learn driving technique as intended is something that, when neglected, can cause major inefficiencies.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Specialization says just the opposite. That everyone should specialize in a combination of what they are good at and there is a demand because it is much more efficient and trade those goods and services that they specialize in for goods and services that they don’t. In the modern era instead of trading directly, we use money as an intermediary. Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize. Why is car maintenance anything that everyone should know and not plumbing, electrical work or carpentry?
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
    > Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize. That's simply bullshit. If you specialize on only installing tires on cars, but not removing them, you have specialized more than a business that swaps your tires, but you have created massive inefficiency by requiring your customers to somehow move around vehicles without tires for you to install tires for them. There are particular circumstances where specialization increases efficiency, and there are (obviously) other circumstances where specialization decreases efficiency, so it's nonsensical to just say that specializing is always the more efficient choice, which is why all your analogies fail: You use an example where specialization (arguably) increases efficiency, then you completely fail to explain how computer skills fall into the same category as that example, and then you conclude that therefore it is in the same category.

ben509 7y ago

People do disregard numeracy if all the, "LOL, your teacher said you wouldn't always have a calculator in your pocket" memes are anything to go by.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I guess a lot of those people end up in poverty, though probably not as many as it would seem it should, because the society does a lot of work to protect unwillingly innumerate people from exploitation, which makes it easier for lazy people to disregard numeracy without consequences. Still, numeracy is not being able to multiply a bunch of 3-digit numbers on a piece of paper. Numeracy is primarily knowing which numbers to multiply, or add together, or subtract from each other to learn something you need, and that you can do this in the first place.