7 ms·

My take on the productivity paradox is software is a form of literacy. We have put a pen and paper onto every desktop and every pocket but almost no-one can re

My take on the productivity paradox is software is a form of literacy. We have put a pen and paper onto every desktop and every pocket but almost no-one can read or write. Edit: And those that can find that only a tiny fraction of the fold is written down (accessible through the virtual cyber world). Amazon's secret to success was forcing every service to live behind a "public" API.

heurisko 5y ago
I disagree that writing software is comparable to literacy. I think it's more similar to any other profession, with a skillset you can learn if you're interested, or learn to get paid. Not everyone is interested in writing software, and that's fine. It has also never been easier to tinker with things, as root VMs are cheaply available, in comparison to 20 years ago, when you really were just given a cpanel interface, if you were on a budget.
- verve_rat 5y ago
  Not writing software, using it requires software literacy. How many people do you know that refuse to learn the software they use everyday? How many times have you helped a friend or colleague with some problem just by googling it even when you don't really understand what they do for a living? It's not that we need everyone to create software, but it would unlock huge productivity gains if everyone stopped pasting screen shots into word. Excel might be the most important knowledge tool of our time, and almost no one knows how to use it.
  - andi999 5y ago
    Somehown I think the literature on excel is lacking. Do you know any reference which shows 'how to use it' in your sense?
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I think learning has changed as well. It’s no longer a (traditional canonical) reference that’s most useful (though Microsoft surely has one on each version of excel) but rather “how do I formulate a search to help myself here?” Programmers have been doing GDD* for a while. Other knowledge workers will catch up or be left behind their peers. I use Excel weekly, but not daily. The last thing I remember googling in it was last week and it was (for the fiftieth time) “excel format as millions”. * Google Driven Development
    - criddell 5y ago
      Software used to come with big beautiful manuals. I remember getting Borland Quattro and the box was a cube because the manuals were so thick. I think there are a lot of benefits to printed references but for me the biggest was accidentally finding something cool while looking for something else.
  - heurisko 5y ago
    > How many times have you helped a friend or colleague with some problem just by googling it even when you don't really understand what they do for a living? I think sometimes it is also the case of knowingly what to Google for, and being able to pick out the correct answer. For example, recently I was involved in a cache issue for an android phone. One of the answers on Google was to download some sort of cache cleaning program. Of course, I knew that this was likely to be a security risk, but others would have downloaded it. People are naturally wary about this thing, so sometimes I don't mind if they'd prefer not to Google and implement a solution themselves.
    - enraged_camel 5y ago
      >> I think sometimes it is also the case of knowingly what to Google for, and being able to pick out the correct answer. To me this is a part of literacy: how to know what to search for, and how to know which results are relevant.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    This literacy is particularly important because people operate in a field fraught with coercive, user-hostile design and scammers.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  IMHO software development is closest to research work. E.g. a software development company is much closer to a research institute or design center than an assembly line in a factory. Unfortunately in reality it's more often treated like a late-medieval manufactory, or at best a scriptorium in a monastery.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >I think it's more similar to any other profession Could not disagree more. I run a small business selling used video games online, and come from a SWE/EEE background. The fact that we've got processes in place that are built from the ground up to be scalable and automatable, as well as the simple Python scripts to perform this automation has basically tripled or quadrupled our productivity. I could see much the same happening for a lot of workers who handle data, and as more people who have learned to code enter the workforce I'm not sure employers will continue to tolerate (for example) accountants who can't write their own report generators.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    >>> accountants who can't write their own report generators. what a great way to put it
  - gonzo41 5y ago
    I honestly think what you're describing will take about 25-50 more years to happen, if ever. Whilst people are getting smarter and more capable, HN is a bubble of people who'll put in the effort to do the stuff you're describing. Systems like SAP/Salesforce and other mega ERP and management systems are filling that space. I expect people will just be learning to live in ecosystems. Similar to whats happening with the cloud in the present day for developers.
  - nradov 5y ago
    In large companies, accountants already spend much of their time building custom reports for management. A lot are in Excel, but other specialized tools are also common.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Literacy is known at the top for things like the Iliad or the works of Shakespeare, but the major benefits are actually much more mundane, like allowing doctors to write prescriptions or being able to have instructions in a manual. Similarly, you may never write an OS or a AAA game, but being able to just automate a teeny tiny bit of your Excel spreadsheet, that's where software literacy will benefit the most people.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    Exactly :-)
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    And what you describe is what leads to innovation.
  - xyzzy123 5y ago
    The first uses of literacy seem to be enabling beauracracy. Taxes, business records, laws, standardising things. The art stuff seems to have come later.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Not everyone is interested in writing books...so no reason for them to learn to read or write.
farseer 5y ago
We had a traditional pen and paper in every house for a few hundred years now, but we still need accountants, lawyers, mathematicians and writers.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
That's a fun metaphor. I don't think it's _literally_ true :) Adding software got easy because development evolved, and supply exceeded demand. The "Internet of Trash" is my go-to example. Modern engineering got so good, and we're surrounded by so much efficient, durable technology that manufacturers ran out of ways to add value. So they started figuring out how to: 1) add internet connectivity whether it's wanted or not 2) control and break things using software 3) extract profitable data from users All of these just kick the can down the road toward more solutionism without really innovating in the original engineering domain.
jb1991 5y ago
People have lots of things in their homes that they’re not experts at or even knowledgeable of. Most people have a hammer and nail sitting around, that doesn’t mean they can build a piece of furniture or build a house. I’ve got all the tools to make bread, but I wouldn’t even know how to get started without some practice. And the list goes on. I also have a real pen and real paper, but that doesn’t mean I can write a novel.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  It does literally mean you can write a novel. from an early age you have been trained to write and construct narratives. You can write that novel. it yeah no one has trained you at Primary School to build furniture:-)
bsenftner 5y ago
If we're gonna talk about literacy, we need to talk about how many people receive college educations, yet have across the board weak literacy as operating, functional humans. Not just reading, but in thinking itself, as well as care of their bodies such that they can think at all. Critical analysis is no longer being taught, or its teaching is failing hard. I meet quite a few people that simply are incapable of stringing together logical ideas greater than 2-3 concepts. And the concepts they use everyday, they barely grasp and have no foundational understanding how such processes operate or even continue to be. This a pure education issue, and that includes eradication of the false education taught by religious backed educational institutes. The magical thinking taught by religious backed schools and universities create mentally constrained individuals who live in a demon haunted world and are dragging down all of civilization.
softwarebeware 5y ago
I think you’re on to something there. Most software available today merely does what free software already does, but with specific marketing to make it seem like something people need. For example, all of the below software categories are easily handled with either the software bundled with your operating system or a simple open source download: - budgeting - to do / productivity - book / music / video game / etc. media cataloging - project planning - event planning - file storage - etc When someone remarked once that most SaaS products are a front end to a spreadsheet, I just thought, “they’re not wrong.” Now if people had computer literacy they wouldn’t pay $20 a month for a service their computer already does.
- fooblessmooo 5y ago
  I think what’s truly missing is that all those apps don’t make sharing easy, and operating systems all suck at sharing, or when they’re ok at it (airdrop), it’s limited to nearby people, or not across OSes, etc. Almost all SaaS are about easy cross-device, cross-internet, sharing, which all traditional apps don’t even try to be good at.
  - softwarebeware 5y ago
    I agree that's a valid point and it totally makes sense why people pay for certain things. I'd also observe that SyncThing* obviates it, again for free, but more people would have to know about it and use it. * https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/

heurisko 5y ago

I disagree that writing software is comparable to literacy. I think it's more similar to any other profession, with a skillset you can learn if you're interested, or learn to get paid. Not everyone is interested in writing software, and that's fine. It has also never been easier to tinker with things, as root VMs are cheaply available, in comparison to 20 years ago, when you really were just given a cpanel interface, if you were on a budget.

verve_rat 5y ago
Not writing software, using it requires software literacy. How many people do you know that refuse to learn the software they use everyday? How many times have you helped a friend or colleague with some problem just by googling it even when you don't really understand what they do for a living? It's not that we need everyone to create software, but it would unlock huge productivity gains if everyone stopped pasting screen shots into word. Excel might be the most important knowledge tool of our time, and almost no one knows how to use it.
- andi999 5y ago
  Somehown I think the literature on excel is lacking. Do you know any reference which shows 'how to use it' in your sense?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I think learning has changed as well. It’s no longer a (traditional canonical) reference that’s most useful (though Microsoft surely has one on each version of excel) but rather “how do I formulate a search to help myself here?” Programmers have been doing GDD* for a while. Other knowledge workers will catch up or be left behind their peers. I use Excel weekly, but not daily. The last thing I remember googling in it was last week and it was (for the fiftieth time) “excel format as millions”. * Google Driven Development
  - criddell 5y ago
    Software used to come with big beautiful manuals. I remember getting Borland Quattro and the box was a cube because the manuals were so thick. I think there are a lot of benefits to printed references but for me the biggest was accidentally finding something cool while looking for something else.
- heurisko 5y ago
  > How many times have you helped a friend or colleague with some problem just by googling it even when you don't really understand what they do for a living? I think sometimes it is also the case of knowingly what to Google for, and being able to pick out the correct answer. For example, recently I was involved in a cache issue for an android phone. One of the answers on Google was to download some sort of cache cleaning program. Of course, I knew that this was likely to be a security risk, but others would have downloaded it. People are naturally wary about this thing, so sometimes I don't mind if they'd prefer not to Google and implement a solution themselves.
  - enraged_camel 5y ago
    >> I think sometimes it is also the case of knowingly what to Google for, and being able to pick out the correct answer. To me this is a part of literacy: how to know what to search for, and how to know which results are relevant.
- nicbou 5y ago
  This literacy is particularly important because people operate in a field fraught with coercive, user-hostile design and scammers.
flohofwoe 5y ago
IMHO software development is closest to research work. E.g. a software development company is much closer to a research institute or design center than an assembly line in a factory. Unfortunately in reality it's more often treated like a late-medieval manufactory, or at best a scriptorium in a monastery.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
AussieWog93 5y ago
>I think it's more similar to any other profession Could not disagree more. I run a small business selling used video games online, and come from a SWE/EEE background. The fact that we've got processes in place that are built from the ground up to be scalable and automatable, as well as the simple Python scripts to perform this automation has basically tripled or quadrupled our productivity. I could see much the same happening for a lot of workers who handle data, and as more people who have learned to code enter the workforce I'm not sure employers will continue to tolerate (for example) accountants who can't write their own report generators.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  >>> accountants who can't write their own report generators. what a great way to put it
- gonzo41 5y ago
  I honestly think what you're describing will take about 25-50 more years to happen, if ever. Whilst people are getting smarter and more capable, HN is a bubble of people who'll put in the effort to do the stuff you're describing. Systems like SAP/Salesforce and other mega ERP and management systems are filling that space. I expect people will just be learning to live in ecosystems. Similar to whats happening with the cloud in the present day for developers.
- nradov 5y ago
  In large companies, accountants already spend much of their time building custom reports for management. A lot are in Excel, but other specialized tools are also common.
lordnacho 5y ago
Literacy is known at the top for things like the Iliad or the works of Shakespeare, but the major benefits are actually much more mundane, like allowing doctors to write prescriptions or being able to have instructions in a manual. Similarly, you may never write an OS or a AAA game, but being able to just automate a teeny tiny bit of your Excel spreadsheet, that's where software literacy will benefit the most people.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  Exactly :-)
- datavirtue 5y ago
  And what you describe is what leads to innovation.
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  The first uses of literacy seem to be enabling beauracracy. Taxes, business records, laws, standardising things. The art stuff seems to have come later.
datavirtue 5y ago
Not everyone is interested in writing books...so no reason for them to learn to read or write.

farseer 5y ago

We had a traditional pen and paper in every house for a few hundred years now, but we still need accountants, lawyers, mathematicians and writers.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

That's a fun metaphor. I don't think it's _literally_ true :) Adding software got easy because development evolved, and supply exceeded demand. The "Internet of Trash" is my go-to example. Modern engineering got so good, and we're surrounded by so much efficient, durable technology that manufacturers ran out of ways to add value. So they started figuring out how to: 1) add internet connectivity whether it's wanted or not 2) control and break things using software 3) extract profitable data from users All of these just kick the can down the road toward more solutionism without really innovating in the original engineering domain.

jb1991 5y ago

People have lots of things in their homes that they’re not experts at or even knowledgeable of. Most people have a hammer and nail sitting around, that doesn’t mean they can build a piece of furniture or build a house. I’ve got all the tools to make bread, but I wouldn’t even know how to get started without some practice. And the list goes on. I also have a real pen and real paper, but that doesn’t mean I can write a novel.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
It does literally mean you can write a novel. from an early age you have been trained to write and construct narratives. You can write that novel. it yeah no one has trained you at Primary School to build furniture:-)

bsenftner 5y ago

If we're gonna talk about literacy, we need to talk about how many people receive college educations, yet have across the board weak literacy as operating, functional humans. Not just reading, but in thinking itself, as well as care of their bodies such that they can think at all. Critical analysis is no longer being taught, or its teaching is failing hard. I meet quite a few people that simply are incapable of stringing together logical ideas greater than 2-3 concepts. And the concepts they use everyday, they barely grasp and have no foundational understanding how such processes operate or even continue to be. This a pure education issue, and that includes eradication of the false education taught by religious backed educational institutes. The magical thinking taught by religious backed schools and universities create mentally constrained individuals who live in a demon haunted world and are dragging down all of civilization.

softwarebeware 5y ago

I think you’re on to something there. Most software available today merely does what free software already does, but with specific marketing to make it seem like something people need. For example, all of the below software categories are easily handled with either the software bundled with your operating system or a simple open source download: - budgeting - to do / productivity - book / music / video game / etc. media cataloging - project planning - event planning - file storage - etc When someone remarked once that most SaaS products are a front end to a spreadsheet, I just thought, “they’re not wrong.” Now if people had computer literacy they wouldn’t pay $20 a month for a service their computer already does.

fooblessmooo 5y ago
I think what’s truly missing is that all those apps don’t make sharing easy, and operating systems all suck at sharing, or when they’re ok at it (airdrop), it’s limited to nearby people, or not across OSes, etc. Almost all SaaS are about easy cross-device, cross-internet, sharing, which all traditional apps don’t even try to be good at.
- softwarebeware 5y ago
  I agree that's a valid point and it totally makes sense why people pay for certain things. I'd also observe that SyncThing* obviates it, again for free, but more people would have to know about it and use it. * https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/