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What kind of hot garbage is this? > the Word module I have used Word between 1994 and the late 2000s, and then I stuck with my copy of Word 97 (or 2000), and

by wink 5y ago

What kind of hot garbage is this? > the Word module I have used Word between 1994 and the late 2000s, and then I stuck with my copy of Word 97 (or 2000), and it didn't yet have the changes/comments function yet (afaik, or I never used it). So by adopting too early and writing my stuff in latex I failed this arbitrary test. Great ;) More seriously though, this shouldn't be too surprising to anyone who is of that age. While some of us learned the ins and outs of computers in the late 90s, the bulk of our classmates could write an email and that's that. Maybe my generation where I live (in the VERY narrow sense, of being +/- 3 years old) was especially lucky as somehow the web just came to prominence when we were in our teens and it was so new and everyone was excited that you at least got an email address and used computers at school for a bit. But real knowledge was rare, so I can imagine even 5 years later there was less incentive and it's already been some kind of commodity...

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
I think the point is that whatever document preparation system they choose to use, digital natives aren't magically proficient at it but have make an effort to learn to use it like everyone else. I think the real takeaway from today's kids being digital natives is that you no longer have to "win them over" with bloated GUI applications that are designed to emulate old-fashioned desk work with the leaky abstractions that entails. They already take for granted that computers are the future. It's a golden opportunity to embrace higher power systems systems where the formatting is all abstracted away by standardised macros and all they're left with is a lawyering DSL. Learning a text editor and a small DSL should even be easier than learning Word (or even LaTeX) in-and-out, and digital natives should be less biased against it than previous generations, having never done paper desk work before in their lives.
- wink 5y ago
  I think the author fundamentally misunderstood a lot of things (or maybe I did). As I wrote, I have no clue about Word, but usually I can solve other people's problems in a minute or two. The "digital native" part is only understanding patterns in software/UI/digital things and having enough experience with enough "systems" to be able to adapt. There's no fear of a misclick wiping out all the work. Just look in the menu and do some educated guessing...

by wink 5y ago

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago

I think the point is that whatever document preparation system they choose to use, digital natives aren't magically proficient at it but have make an effort to learn to use it like everyone else. I think the real takeaway from today's kids being digital natives is that you no longer have to "win them over" with bloated GUI applications that are designed to emulate old-fashioned desk work with the leaky abstractions that entails. They already take for granted that computers are the future. It's a golden opportunity to embrace higher power systems systems where the formatting is all abstracted away by standardised macros and all they're left with is a lawyering DSL. Learning a text editor and a small DSL should even be easier than learning Word (or even LaTeX) in-and-out, and digital natives should be less biased against it than previous generations, having never done paper desk work before in their lives.

wink 5y ago
I think the author fundamentally misunderstood a lot of things (or maybe I did). As I wrote, I have no clue about Word, but usually I can solve other people's problems in a minute or two. The "digital native" part is only understanding patterns in software/UI/digital things and having enough experience with enough "systems" to be able to adapt. There's no fear of a misclick wiping out all the work. Just look in the menu and do some educated guessing...