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The thing is that using a smartphone is a _very easy_ skill. I mean, who are we kidding. These devices are set up such that the stupidest person can use them.

• ndriscoll 2y ago
  It's probably still appropriate in 2025 for kids to go to the computer lab and learn to use an actual computer (ideally running some flavor of Linux so that they can learn to expect that the computer is a tool that obeys the user). Phones are both idiot-proof and expert-proof, and while you can use something like Termux as another commented noted (and I use it on my phone), it's sufficiently horrible that you'll never see the potential productivity boost, and will think that anything outside of "apps" is unreasonably difficult (because phones make it so). So it's not that phones are easy enough to use that you don't need to teach them; it's that the thing you want to teach is the power of a general purpose computer, and phones try very hard to hide the fact that they are extremely powerful general purpose computers. You need to learn on a real computer to know what you even want the phone to be able to do.
  • const_cast 2y ago
    I agree 100%. From what I've personally seen, I think younger people are actually becoming less versed in computers. There was a brief moment in time in which: 1. Most people had access to computers. 2. Computers were difficult to use and required building skills. 2 is no longer true anymore, so those skills are getting lost. Try asking a 15 year old what a filesystem is.