5 ms·

What exactly were they supposed to teach you in 90s and 00s? I was a rebellious Linux-loving computer geek kid during these times, but OpenOffice was incomparab

What exactly were they supposed to teach you in 90s and 00s? I was a rebellious Linux-loving computer geek kid during these times, but OpenOffice was incomparably worse back then (and other programming environments weren't as accessible as VB6) - so I maintained a Windows VM for school, not because I had to (fuck that) but because the software was so much better.

dijit 4y ago
If someone has an aptitude for computers and want to work with them then: 1) productivity suites are a poor fit generaly. 2) learning concepts over specific tools is always going to be a better investment. 3) I’m not sure there even was open office when I was learning. But there was lotus and co. // I’m mainly annoyed that they didn’t teach concepts around computers and instead focused on “Microsoft X” so my entire education was based on one company and what it was inflicting on the world. Everyone who graduates only knowing those tools is enormous pressure for companies to use those tools, or the burden of training from scratch is on the company.
- EUROCARE 4y ago
  Yeah, I remember Lotus... And you seriously would've rather used that??? I prefer to keep torture out of schools. It was the other way around, at least where I live. Companies pressured schools to teach skills they actually need people to have - and that's MS Office, because even today nothing else comes close. And children with aptitude for computers, who don't need office suites but would like programming - that's less than 1%. If you want public schools, you're not going to have specialized teaching for small groups - nobody pays more for that.
  - dijit 4y ago
    > you would seriously prefer that?! I’d prefer a real education about how computers work, not to learn any particular single tool or ecosystem. Religious education does not only teach Christianity. It’s wild that computer education only teaches (or taught) Microsoft (a non-European proprietary corporation). > even today nothing else comes close. Close to what though? Close to replicating MS office? Sure, but that’s like judging an apartment building on the merits of a house. Your implication that productivity tools compared to MS office are lacking. That’s extremely dubious, perhaps some features are lacking (google sheets doesn’t support GANT charts for example) but there’s other things that you can do which are impossible in office (google sheets can do raw SQL and attach to big query); I’m specifically comparing google to MS here but it’s mainly to give an idea that things don’t map 1:1 across productivity suites. And yes: The world runs on excel, but I find it hard to believe that’s because excel is the pinnacle of software. It’s probably more to do with that it’s “good enough” and fairly flexible- and crucially, everyone knows it and it’s pitfalls. You can be productive with other software.
    - EUROCARE 4y ago
      Excel can do SQL as well, and it actually has abstracted data connectors capable of much more than just SQL and you can easily provide your own connectors too, and much more than just connectors - Excel is used e.g. as a full-fledged trading station at some places. It's capabilities like these why Excel runs the world, it's not some accident of history. You don't need to do stuff like this all the time, but it makes no sense to use two office suites, so you use the more capable one.
      - dijit 4y ago
        As a person in the world who has done PNLs for pretty large companies (in excel) which constituted 30GB of working memory to open. No, that is not why Excel runs the world. Those capabilities are not used even slightly in the companies I’ve worked at.
        EUROCARE 4y ago
        Funny, I'm using them right now, and the entire office around me too.
        dijit 4y ago
        Didn’t know you ran the world.
        EUROCARE 4y ago
        Well I'm just a support for that, but yeah I guess you could say that's what's being done around here (huge amount of managed assets and properties).
joshuaissac 4y ago
I went to school in the '00s. After irreversibly breaking the Office installation on my home computer while tinkering, I ended up doing all of my IT coursework, which was required to be done with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access, using OpenOffice instead. For production use, the differences between the office suites may have been significant, but for schoolwork, it was more than good enough. We were to take screenshots of the application windows while we produced our work, and the assessors were happy enough with my OpenOffice screenshots.
- EUROCARE 4y ago
  Yeah but you're not doing schoolwork for its own sake, you're doing it to develop skills useful in real world once you're adult.

dijit 4y ago

If someone has an aptitude for computers and want to work with them then: 1) productivity suites are a poor fit generaly. 2) learning concepts over specific tools is always going to be a better investment. 3) I’m not sure there even was open office when I was learning. But there was lotus and co. // I’m mainly annoyed that they didn’t teach concepts around computers and instead focused on “Microsoft X” so my entire education was based on one company and what it was inflicting on the world. Everyone who graduates only knowing those tools is enormous pressure for companies to use those tools, or the burden of training from scratch is on the company.

EUROCARE 4y ago
Yeah, I remember Lotus... And you seriously would've rather used that??? I prefer to keep torture out of schools. It was the other way around, at least where I live. Companies pressured schools to teach skills they actually need people to have - and that's MS Office, because even today nothing else comes close. And children with aptitude for computers, who don't need office suites but would like programming - that's less than 1%. If you want public schools, you're not going to have specialized teaching for small groups - nobody pays more for that.
- dijit 4y ago
  > you would seriously prefer that?! I’d prefer a real education about how computers work, not to learn any particular single tool or ecosystem. Religious education does not only teach Christianity. It’s wild that computer education only teaches (or taught) Microsoft (a non-European proprietary corporation). > even today nothing else comes close. Close to what though? Close to replicating MS office? Sure, but that’s like judging an apartment building on the merits of a house. Your implication that productivity tools compared to MS office are lacking. That’s extremely dubious, perhaps some features are lacking (google sheets doesn’t support GANT charts for example) but there’s other things that you can do which are impossible in office (google sheets can do raw SQL and attach to big query); I’m specifically comparing google to MS here but it’s mainly to give an idea that things don’t map 1:1 across productivity suites. And yes: The world runs on excel, but I find it hard to believe that’s because excel is the pinnacle of software. It’s probably more to do with that it’s “good enough” and fairly flexible- and crucially, everyone knows it and it’s pitfalls. You can be productive with other software.
  - EUROCARE 4y ago
    Excel can do SQL as well, and it actually has abstracted data connectors capable of much more than just SQL and you can easily provide your own connectors too, and much more than just connectors - Excel is used e.g. as a full-fledged trading station at some places. It's capabilities like these why Excel runs the world, it's not some accident of history. You don't need to do stuff like this all the time, but it makes no sense to use two office suites, so you use the more capable one.
    - dijit 4y ago
      As a person in the world who has done PNLs for pretty large companies (in excel) which constituted 30GB of working memory to open. No, that is not why Excel runs the world. Those capabilities are not used even slightly in the companies I’ve worked at.
      - EUROCARE 4y ago
        Funny, I'm using them right now, and the entire office around me too.
        dijit 4y ago
        Didn’t know you ran the world.
        EUROCARE 4y ago
        Well I'm just a support for that, but yeah I guess you could say that's what's being done around here (huge amount of managed assets and properties).

joshuaissac 4y ago

I went to school in the '00s. After irreversibly breaking the Office installation on my home computer while tinkering, I ended up doing all of my IT coursework, which was required to be done with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access, using OpenOffice instead. For production use, the differences between the office suites may have been significant, but for schoolwork, it was more than good enough. We were to take screenshots of the application windows while we produced our work, and the assessors were happy enough with my OpenOffice screenshots.

EUROCARE 4y ago
Yeah but you're not doing schoolwork for its own sake, you're doing it to develop skills useful in real world once you're adult.