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I've been working with a recent college graduate, in STEM, who did not know Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V or Ctrl-S because they had essentially never used a desktop/laptop com

I've been working with a recent college graduate, in STEM, who did not know Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V or Ctrl-S because they had essentially never used a desktop/laptop computer. They had one, but it is something like my drill. It gets dusted off once every few years when there's no other option but otherwise sits on the shelf.

myth_drannon 4y ago
That's very surprising. All through the college they never had to write a paper? You can't write a paper on tablet/cellphone.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  Google Docs on the phone has been very usable for a long time. There really isn't much you can't do on a phone, it's whether or not you can take advantage of the facilities offered by the laptop/desktop.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    I would 100% lose my mind trying to write a paper on my phone. I don't want to imagine anyone typing out 20 pages like that.
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
      There are plenty of colleges and degrees where nobody in undergrad ever writes a 20 page paper. Hell, I graduated from a well respected university with a non STEM degree a decade ago and still never had to write anything more than a few pages. To be fair, the university had a very strict honor code and the amount of people that would try to plagiarize on longer writing assignments definitely led to pressure for professors to not assign essays as homework. Those were exclusively meant to be handwritten into blue books on exam day.
nicolaslem 4y ago
I am just repeating what I read on HN but it seems to be worse than that: some students arrive in college having absolutely no clue what files and directories are. Their frame of reference is that apps show their data when they open them.
red-iron-pine 4y ago
ctrl-c or ctrl-z are easy to teach, practically trivia. "here, do a copy... now paste... right click or use ctrl-[whatever]" boom. done. those who don't know file structures are gonna require a little more help, but again that's not like rocket science. I could get a reasonably sharp 16 year old on that in a day or two. It's not like driving a stick shift, in which case the noob will annihilator my transmission by not knowing; I can make the file system noobs create, delete, and move dummy files all week with no overhead.

myth_drannon 4y ago

That's very surprising. All through the college they never had to write a paper? You can't write a paper on tablet/cellphone.

jrumbut 4y ago
Google Docs on the phone has been very usable for a long time. There really isn't much you can't do on a phone, it's whether or not you can take advantage of the facilities offered by the laptop/desktop.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I would 100% lose my mind trying to write a paper on my phone. I don't want to imagine anyone typing out 20 pages like that.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
    There are plenty of colleges and degrees where nobody in undergrad ever writes a 20 page paper. Hell, I graduated from a well respected university with a non STEM degree a decade ago and still never had to write anything more than a few pages. To be fair, the university had a very strict honor code and the amount of people that would try to plagiarize on longer writing assignments definitely led to pressure for professors to not assign essays as homework. Those were exclusively meant to be handwritten into blue books on exam day.

nicolaslem 4y ago

I am just repeating what I read on HN but it seems to be worse than that: some students arrive in college having absolutely no clue what files and directories are. Their frame of reference is that apps show their data when they open them.

red-iron-pine 4y ago

ctrl-c or ctrl-z are easy to teach, practically trivia. "here, do a copy... now paste... right click or use ctrl-[whatever]" boom. done. those who don't know file structures are gonna require a little more help, but again that's not like rocket science. I could get a reasonably sharp 16 year old on that in a day or two. It's not like driving a stick shift, in which case the noob will annihilator my transmission by not knowing; I can make the file system noobs create, delete, and move dummy files all week with no overhead.