4 ms·

Not sure about kids, but I've seen university students that literally did not know how to use a non iOS computing device. Colleagues had to start explaining wha

Not sure about kids, but I've seen university students that literally did not know how to use a non iOS computing device. Colleagues had to start explaining what a file is, a folder, etc etc, in their courses. Honestly I don't find that too bad. My guess is that computers will go the same way cars did: Most people will only know the very basics that are needed to operate the thing. Any deeper knowledge will be left to enthusiasts and professionals. Thus computers, while getting more complicated internally, will have fewer and fewer modi of usages.

throwaway71271 2y ago
> what a file is What is a file, what is a program, how programs run and how programs communicate, is not understood by most people (including most CS students). > Honestly I don't find that too bad. I understand what you mean, it is the same with most technology, users just use it, as your example of cars, or even furniture, or forks and spoons, or language, I am not even sure it is related to complexity. But I disagree on what it means to use a computer, because unlike other machines, it does what you make of it (now even more, with llama 3.1 out), I think to use a computer means to program it. Somehow in the last 30-40 years, user interfaces gave up on their users. You dont own your programs, your files or in many cases even your computer, it doesnt start the programs you want(iphone for example), and you cant debug other programs (e.g. in case of macos you cant gdb -p into signed programs unless you disable the system's integrity protection). Somehow we managed to squeeze all the fun out of it. As John Carmack says: the distance between what it is, and what it could be, is the opportunity, and I am sure people can have way more fun programming :) This commodore 64 user guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9WnHuGjZ38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9WnHuGjZ38 is my inspiration.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  The first class of my CS degree was "How to use Microsoft Word" and some of the other students had a really, really hard time figuring this out. Including the guy next to me who kept telling me he had a job lined up already to write software for nuclear reactors in Pascal.
  - defrost 2y ago
    This aligns with reality. To be fair to the other guy, early versions of MS Word sucked when it came to LaTeX representations of integrals and nuclear decay chain notations. Perhaps more recent versions do better.
  - jtsuken 2y ago
    There was a post on HN some time ago about a candidate for a senior IT role, who wrote code in MS Word. I can't find it right now. Maybe I should try Bing search
    - pmontra 2y ago
      Great fun with the autocorrected Unicode double quotes. A customer of mine got bitten on a preproduction server because of a copy and paste from some blog, where ASCII " were converted to Unicode (slanted) "
  - nilamo 2y ago
    Why would using a fancy editor be in any way relevant to writing code? That CS class should be dropped from the curriculum, imo, until such time as bolding a register has some sort of meaning, or perhaps viewing an sql table via "print preview".
pmontra 2y ago
A good developer I've been working with years ago told me "I really don't know how networking works [and SQL] but... I studied Graphic Design, not CS. While I was studying that I realized that I liked programming more than design so I started doing it and never got a formal education about computer stuff." He was really good at Node and he ended up being the lead developer of the company he was working for. I know good developers coming from all sort of backgrounds, from Philosophy to Agrarian science (if that's the right English term for that.)

throwaway71271 2y ago

> what a file is What is a file, what is a program, how programs run and how programs communicate, is not understood by most people (including most CS students). > Honestly I don't find that too bad. I understand what you mean, it is the same with most technology, users just use it, as your example of cars, or even furniture, or forks and spoons, or language, I am not even sure it is related to complexity. But I disagree on what it means to use a computer, because unlike other machines, it does what you make of it (now even more, with llama 3.1 out), I think to use a computer means to program it. Somehow in the last 30-40 years, user interfaces gave up on their users. You dont own your programs, your files or in many cases even your computer, it doesnt start the programs you want(iphone for example), and you cant debug other programs (e.g. in case of macos you cant gdb -p into signed programs unless you disable the system's integrity protection). Somehow we managed to squeeze all the fun out of it. As John Carmack says: the distance between what it is, and what it could be, is the opportunity, and I am sure people can have way more fun programming :) This commodore 64 user guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9WnHuGjZ38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9WnHuGjZ38 is my inspiration.

qingcharles 2y ago
The first class of my CS degree was "How to use Microsoft Word" and some of the other students had a really, really hard time figuring this out. Including the guy next to me who kept telling me he had a job lined up already to write software for nuclear reactors in Pascal.
- defrost 2y ago
  This aligns with reality. To be fair to the other guy, early versions of MS Word sucked when it came to LaTeX representations of integrals and nuclear decay chain notations. Perhaps more recent versions do better.
- jtsuken 2y ago
  There was a post on HN some time ago about a candidate for a senior IT role, who wrote code in MS Word. I can't find it right now. Maybe I should try Bing search
  - pmontra 2y ago
    Great fun with the autocorrected Unicode double quotes. A customer of mine got bitten on a preproduction server because of a copy and paste from some blog, where ASCII " were converted to Unicode (slanted) "
- nilamo 2y ago
  Why would using a fancy editor be in any way relevant to writing code? That CS class should be dropped from the curriculum, imo, until such time as bolding a register has some sort of meaning, or perhaps viewing an sql table via "print preview".

pmontra 2y ago

A good developer I've been working with years ago told me "I really don't know how networking works [and SQL] but... I studied Graphic Design, not CS. While I was studying that I realized that I liked programming more than design so I started doing it and never got a formal education about computer stuff." He was really good at Node and he ended up being the lead developer of the company he was working for. I know good developers coming from all sort of backgrounds, from Philosophy to Agrarian science (if that's the right English term for that.)