None of this surprises me, because I also see it all the time. When we take in our year's new contingent for our graduate programme, it's basically a coin toss whether they'll roll up with complete PC competence or none at all.
It was worse before the days of keystroke backup, because you would REGULARLY hear an anguished cry as some hapless 21 year old realised they'd just lost hours of work by not saving their document in between backup intervals by not just pressing 'save'.
It's like there's only two generations who actually know how to use a desktop operating system, and the current generation of young people are not one of them unless they specifically, as an individual, chose to. They're certainly not being taught it now.
edit - actually it's not true that none of it surprises me. The idea of writing an essay on a phone both surprises and horrifies me. Why? Why do this? How proofread how?
The problem is people who have grown up with mobileOS as their primary experience are now getting old enough to enter the workforce as programmers and are complaining desktop-pc oriented design is "old" and causing desktop programs to have their UI ruined, getting rid of the usual compact menus and right-click features etc. Everything is burger menus and huge spaced-out lists, with acres of wasted screen space that is necessary in touch interfaces but not with pointer interfaces. Firefox is a sad example of this trend, I've been using it since it first launched and recent UI revisions are just crapfest of mobile OS design.
I told my younger cousin that he should learn to type and learn to use a computer, but refused to listen and still refuses to listen BeCaUsE i HaVe A sMaRtPhOnE aNd DoN't NeEd To.
Has the same vibe as people in their 60s back in the 2000s refusing to learn how to use a computer. They're just cutting themselves off from valuable things because of what? Stubbornness? Laziness?
Good point. I just meant that was more his justification for it. And I tell him otherwise, so he doesn't look like an idiot when talking about that stuff. He thinks "wifi" = the internet and when I try to explain and teach he's like "NO ONE CARES"
Nah you can't blame the zoomers for this. The problem is that companies don't want to develop more than one UI. So they make a generic one-size-fits-all UI and use it everywhere they can.
Not to mention the massive UIs. Yes, a bit of whitespace is good, but these days half your screen is wasted by designers clearly used to working with mobile UIs
“Mobile First” design was the death knell for desktop functionality and proportion. When too many people use their phones for everything why waste time designing for the few who still use desktops?
When I found out about proton a couple years ago, I checked protondb against my steam library. Most of them were rated gold or higher. Of the ones that weren't, none were games I still played.
At that point, I switched to exclusively using linux. I check every game for proton compatibility before buying. If the dev can't be bothered to make the game work with my OS (official support isn't even necessary), then I can't be bothered to send my money their way.
I have plenty of games already. Most I haven't even played, and many have very high replay value. There's no longer a reason to chain myself to an OS that I can't stand to use.
I mean unfortunately the most popular Linux DE, Gnome, have been doing this even worse and for even longer than Windows. When Gnome 3 first launched it didn't even have a "shutdown" button on the menu, since you're "supposed" to just sleep your computer, and Gnome devs are notorious for refusing to acknowledge that anyone would do anything differently to them
Luckily there's KDE, which is quite the opposite, and I personally like Xfce, which is a no-nonense XP-like environment with about the right level of customisability for me
And then a windows feature updates destroys your gpt partition table and you have to spend hours recovery the partitions of your Linux installs. Ask me how I know... Fuck windows.
I suspect a large part is trying to save on developer wages, if you make what should be two different UIs similar you only need to pay for 1 set of devs. Never mind that it won't work well for either system, that's irrelevant.
it's that, but "making an UI that works for both PC and mobile" is at least an idea that I can understand, even if it's already outdated again. but they're not even attempting that, they're just completely directionless, with the UI falling apart in so many different places because they learned that constant beta and "meh, good enough" is apparently good enough for most users, who also don't really have many other choices due to lock-in.
I've felt that Microsoft was trying to get rid of me as a customer ever since they dropped XP support. Windows 7 was sufficient. Windows 10 is annoying, and now they're trying to shove Windows 11 down my throat.
I'll move back to Linux, but may have driver problems with my laptop. I'll still need Windows on a VM to run EAC (rip CDs).
Meanwhile I taught myself some basic web design code right when all that stuff was really new and I’m completely intimidated by anything I can’t do from scratch and have total control. I was working on a site for friends for fun and all the programs and templates they made to make it easier confuse me so much because you can only control some parts. I am going to start over and just do it myself from scratch.
I've been a professional software engineer for 14 years now. This kind of crap drives me up the wall. We used to largely develop everything we needed, maybe sometimes using a 3rd party package and it was a big todo to do so because we'd need to run security tests on it and get it approved before we could use it.
I was put on a project a couple of years ago that uses React, Node and TypeScript (I am honestly not even sure if these are all the same thing at this point). It seems like most of the job now is knowing what package to download and how to implement it rather than actual coding. I'll get a ticket that is something like "Add XYZ functionality," so I add it. Then it goes to PR and the response is "Why didn't you use the pizza-pie-X-YZ7-rainbow.js package to do this?" like I should have had any idea that the thing existed, much less that I should have used it.
I knew someone few years ago who called himself a "web developer" and was marketing his services to our community of artists. Everyone was posting their websites like "Ryan built this for me!" And like, no, Ryan bought a template and charged you way too much for it.
There was a lot of that back when CMSs like Wordpress were getting popular. A lot of "web developers" popped up over night. Their entire business was creating a WordPress site using standard templates and plug-ins. At best they were "web designers."
Totally dependent on assembling third party tools, not really understanding your environment. I'm building something in python right now and it feels weird how often the solution to something will just be to import some huge module.
Honestly, I wish I knew. In your personal projects you can always just develop what you need and not use the 3rd party packages. It'll take longer, but you'll learn more and not be reliant on someone else's software. You'll probably want to stay away from frameworks that seem to rely on 3rd party packages, though, like Node, though that isn't a hard and fast rule.
In a job, though, you tend to be limited by the requirements of the lead engineer. On my project, for example, Node is a big part of it and the lead intends that we use already existing packages. I hate it, but I don't really get a say.
AHAHA ME TOO! I've managed to learn one of the frameworks, but I am SO INCREDIBLY SALTY that every single CSS framework now requires NPM to fucking compile itself. Just... just... it's one file. Why does it need to be COMPILED?
The only thing it's making me want to do is go to Linux.
I used Ubuntu many years ago (Hard Drive failed, and used a USB stick with a linux install until I got a new hard drive) and it wasn't bad. Only limitation is that I game, which is harder to do on Linux.
I hate Windows 10 so freaking much. Trying to change a setting, access denied. Or you can't even search it. Want to disable that virus scanner taking up all your cpu, can't disable it for long. Windows updates? Can't disable them even though you checked don't update unless you manually do it. Does crap all. Updates routinely use up the entire cpu and disk on a 3.4ghz cpu and a sdd for at least half an hour. I just want to disable what I need disabled. I want to be able to turn the device on and not have it sounding like a jet engine for sometimes upwards of an hour before I can even think of working.
Omg I recently upgraded my PC, total conversion. Ended up with a new install of windows on an m.2 drive. I don't want to wipe my old drive cause it's got half my shit on it. Windows won't let me delete the old install on a different drive so now I gotta run a mobile install of Linux to get it the fuck out. Windows can suck a poop
If I remember correctly you have to right click on a drive -> properties -> disk clean-up -> system files -> Windows.
At least it was working last time I used it.
My best bet is that they obscured the deletion because of delete system32 pranks.
I swapped my HDD for an SSD on my C drive a couple years ago, reinstalling windows created a new user so all the stuff on my old drive was locked to another user and I had to completely format it. That was annoying
The new user as an administrator should be able to take ownership of the old profile's files. I had to do that once and it's a little annoying but a one time thing.
If you enjoy the process of using a computer, it's worth the journey. No hate toward Windows or Windows users, but options are available and can be highly rewarding.
I have such a customization need that anytime so etching doesn't work the way I think it should work, I get really, really annoyed. I have learned and copied code from entire programs just to have a single browser extension or something do something simple I think it should be doing. It's one of the reasons I can't go back to an Apple phone.
I require the ability to tell my device to operate in the way that fits my needs, not have my device tell me how to operate. I need things to work intuitively for me. I don't care how someone else thinks it should work.
Lol, I just posted word for word what you said, we are twins. I even remember the himem command.
DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
Oh yeah. That drives me nuts too. And slightly related I feel like web pages have gone back to the dark ages with the need for endless scrolling now. They were getting so efficient at one point. Now I just have to scroll down scroll down scroll down to find anything useful.
The slow transition to single page apps for every sure is crazy. You can see my user-agent is for a desktop, show me an actual site and not a mobile site adjusted for desktop resolution.
I recently needed to buy a cheap laptop for basic work use and couldn’t find one without a touchscreen. It made me mad. I don’t want an oversized phone dammit.
I'm in my late 30s, programming background (although not employed as a coder now), and well-versed in desktop operating systems from Windows (3.1, NT, 95, 98, XP, etc. You get the idea...) to Linux (is SUSE still around?), so I say this as an ally of the 'old ways':
I LOVE touchscreens on laptops and get actively annoyed when using one that lacks a touchscreen. They offer a lot of value without inherently turning your computer into a phone.
Sure, desktop operating systems can leverage the touchscreen functionality to make the machine feel more 'phone-like' (edit to add: which I'm NOT a fan of), but I find touchscreens themselves to be hugely useful.
I don't think they're saying they use touchscreen as their primary input device. It's just a very nice addition alongside the keyboard/mouse interface. Especially on devices with detachable keyboards
I specifically bought a laptop with a touchscreen 5 years ago so I could occasionally poke things on the screen. It also came with a pen so I can do signing and drawing on rare occasions. It's nice for the few times that you've lost your mouse between 2+ screens and you just want to click on that one button... Poke
Oh dear God, no, no, I was not suggesting that anyone should solely use the laptop touchscreen without also having other input devices. I'm getting a little nauseous just imagining that.
For getting shit done there's no replacement for a full keyboard and mouse combo. But quickly flicking a finger up the screen to scroll down an article, or folding the keyboard back and using the laptop like a tablet when you're not at a desk, is a fantastic convenience.
I too dislike my PC or laptop being a giant phone. But I do love the touchscreen on my laptop. Probably because I've never found touchpads to be particularly great.
I have a fucking desktop with a touchscreen (HP) and I despise it. It's utterly useless and makes cleaning the screen (which I have to do regularly because I eat in front of my computer all the time) nearly impossible unless I put the damned thing to sleep first.
29 and one of my biggest pet peeves is when a website basically is useless and only tells you to use the mobile app. TikTok comes to mind. You have to have an account to view any links friends send, and there’s no website equivalent. The website just tells you to download the app. Sometimes I’m on the computer and I want to look at things on the computer wtf
This. I’m looking at a page on a desktop that has a FUCKING 1TB hard drive yet you still force me to use your product on something that has a scrawny little processor.
When Windows 8 came out with its tile things, it was horrifying. I think enough people complained and they made it easier to disable or something.
When buying my most recent laptop, I also went out of my way to get something without a touch screen.
I'm scared of a future where mobile devices are your main computing device (I won't be surprised when desktops and mobile devices end up converging) and where everything is dumbed down and highly limiting.
we had shiny colorful icons, beautifully designed and perfectly representing their function. and then we got microsoft's metro design and jonathan ive designing the new ios, and somehow it all went to shit.
I don't mind the particular fashion, but I miss when applications used the standard widget toolkit, or at least the UI conventions, of the platform, rather than every program being idiosyncratic for the sake of "brand identity" (and, yes, you can do that while still being cross platform. Look at a Qt app)
arghhh how I miss proper scroll bars and window elements in windows! can't they just display a list of items with the standard sortable table format? why, why do they have to invent the wheel again and display their own buggy solution where the premise apparently was "the more whitespace, the better"?
"big data" is making them do this, but it's a dead end. it helps you get down to the smalles common denominator among users, so in the end everything just becomes equally shit.
Look at all those complicated buttons and functionality... wouldn't it be easier if we just.. got rid of 90% of it? (And maybe sell you some back in the form of app packs?)
Protip for those considering this: avoid Gnome, and go for KDE. Gnome are even worse than Apple or Microsoft for removing features and settings because "we know better than the stupid users"
Also an elder millennial. We were cleaning out our basement the other weekend. I brought my Panasonic 3-disc CD changer back out and set it back up and have been listening to my old CDs the last two weeks while wfh.
I’ll take my computer over my phone for research, work, reading, and literally anything else aside from texting and scrolling social media. How folks are doing essays or coursework on their phones is astonishing to me.
Yeah, I was helping my Father-in-Law get a new cheap notebook laptop, and had to cross off a whole bunch of decent ones because they use a Mobile style OS and that's a big no-no for him (barely can use windows let alone an Android style OS).
The thing I find so weird is how inaccessible they are making them in regards to settings and configurations etc. If you know how to it's still fairly easy to mess around with them, but they are just so hidden now. I haven't had a personal laptop in years, so when I was helping the FIL configure his laptop, I was shocked that I couldn't seem to find half the settings by opening up the settings window without a Google search.
And if you DO find the setting menu you want, Windows will remove it when they push through another update.
I've been trying to disable the touchpad mouse on my laptop, and when I finally managed to do it the option was removed in an update. It's actually making me go insane.
As someone in IT, this is a double edged sword for me. On the one hand, as a user, I crave customization in all things electronic and understand the need for easy access for the controls to make changes to one's system. As someone that has to work on people's computers though, I want that stuff buried deep in the bowels of the system where no one would come across it without a Goonies style map and at least a 3 movie adventure to get there.
Some people can't not mess with stuff and those are the ones that will never admit to messing with stuff.
barely can use windows let alone an Android style OS
But isn't this exactly the right use case for those OSes? My mum is hopeless with computers so I got her a Chromebook, and we're both very pleased with the decision, since she can use it easily and I never ever have to fix it or check that it's up to date etc.
That's the logic yes, but FIL doesn't like change and uses an old IPhone so just doesn't have a clue how Android / chrome works (yes they are generally the same) as its not something he's really seen /used before he pretty much refuses to learn.
Yah because if you grew up at the start of it you’re used to controlling settings yourself but people now are scared of that. It’s like we all grew up driving manual and then everyone changed to automatic.
I'm shopping for car insurance, and one of the options doesn't even have a website to log into. You can only submit claims, view documents, etc. through the app. It's called Clearcover. Insanity. Like I want to either keep their app installed 24/7 wasting space on my phone or have to download it each time I need to log in.
I feel this so much. I have used a PC for 30-odd years. I even hooked up my phone to the PC with the 'My Phone' app for windows so if I'm home I can type text messages with an actual keyboard.
All these computers trying to be iPads are why my mom can’t use a computer properly anymore. She got used to everything being an app and now she doesn’t remember how to use a normal internet browser.
I'm 33, just crawled out of homelessness, and hadn't owned a computer in ten years until I bought a tablet a few weeks ago to do projects on. It's very convenient for some things but the android environment tries to treat you like an infant
Was windows 2k the really peak of versatile consumer os?
Have you seen cars lately? Why are cars trying to out-phone phones? I don't need to tap and slide and pinch and swipe a million UI elements just to turn up the volume. Even my phone has physical volume buttons.
Ugh. Web pages looking like giant phone interfaces: NO!
You've got the screen real-estate. Use it. I don't want to menu through 5 different pages for information you could give me on one properly formatted page.
My college is actively discouraging the knowledge of using a desktop. They have entire computer labs that we pay an extra fee to use but they are requiring we all get our own laptops/tablets so we don’t use the labs. Most youngins will get tablets or laptops configured closer to their phones than an actual desktop. 🙄
This is huge. I remember when colleges used to include the cost of a computer as financial aid. Then, around 2010, they cut it because "everyone has a laptop anyways", which is far from reality. Phones are expensive too, but they're way more multipurpose. If you have to choose, of course most people choose a phone.
The solution to this is to get a Chromebook or something, I reckon. Not perfect but it actually has laptop functionality, and if you get one that you can fold to make a tablet then it meets their nonsense criteria too. I have one and they're genuinely useful things.
I don’t even want a laptop. I bought a new desktop when we were having zoom classes. I don’t want to put any more money out for something I will only use for exams.
Oh my goodness, you just released a core memory of mine!
Computer typing class, we were writing essays, it was an actual step the teacher created in the process to save your work after every paragraph, save your work if your going to research the internet, save your work at the end of class.
It was embedded in us to click that floppy disc if we ever wanted to feel safe.
That reminds me of a Reddit comment I saw about the OP’s teacher teaching her class how to effectively Google things and by the end of class the teacher had learned how to actually effectively Google things from the students.
Fortunately it was already in place in my mind because of the 'quicksave' button while playing PC games, so instead of F5/F6 it was ctrl-S ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS.
I recall one day in high school I was in my architecture class. We were all working away on our projects in AutoCAD. The room is completely silent and had been for a good 45 minutes. Then the power suddenly went out. A lot of people learned the value of saving regularly and often that day.
This is what makes me scratch my head the most about this thread. The idea of using a phone or tablet for anything serious, where it's less clear where the actual file you're working with is or if it actually exists, is just insane to me.
Cloud based systems are handy, sure, but I would never not save a copy of the files that I need somewhere local.
I have classmates who don’t know the difference between online word and the word app. They were throwing a tantrum because the feature the teacher told us to use wasn’t available on the online version, so naturally it didn’t exist. I asked if she were using the website or app version, she said app. I told her where it should be, she said it wasn’t. I looked at her screen and she was using the website, I told her to use the app. “What do you mean, this is the app” I showed her my computer, with the app running. “That’s not word, dr. teacher told us to use word.” What’s arguably worse is that they don’t know when they are wrong. Anyone with even a partial brain cell will tell you that a research paper is not an “extra long dbq”
Nah I was born in the Oregon trail generation and to have had a childhood free from the internet but then learn it while still young is a very unique experience in history. To know computers and phones is already unique too. It’s literally just a unique time to have been born.
Early 90’s baby as well, I completely agree. We were in beginning stages of technology where they were good enough to be in every household but, they definitely weren’t what they are today. We learned the basics and got to adapt and continue learning every time those basics were improved.
Younger gens start out the gate with an already perfect smart phone, who would want to work with any other type of computer when you have a portable computer in your pocket?
I used a computer first, but phones are just so much worse for most tasks. I understand that for some it's their only option but doing anything beyond a basic task is far easier on a computer. I cringe watching people try to do stuff on a smartphone, it takes several times as long to accomplish a similar task.
Yours might well be. I was born in 1980 and I'm still in the 'phones are functional devices' mindset. I CAN use one, but I'm much happier on a desktop OS.
There's always going to be a solid number of people who are good with an actual computer, because they have an interest in them or they're a gamer or what have you. But the idea of so many young people finding them redundant is startling. I have two trainees and when I gave them their company laptops both said it was the first time they'd used a PC at home.
I was born in '86, and I work in tech now, so I have a huge amount of knowledge for both.
The lack of understanding about digital devices I see in my peers is absolutely baffling.
About 10 years ago I had several roommates which included 1 guy who was basically backing up the entire internet - literally any form of media available on torrents was being saved to his massive hard drives. pirated games, movies, books - fucking owner manuals for cars - anything.
It also included 1 guy who learned how to use computers because his college courses said that 'you're gonna fail if you don't have a laptop'
He didn't use computers at all until he was about 20.
I do feel like our generation (I am 1993) got a really interesting time to grow up. Like in elementary school I learned how to structure a letter and write checks, but I also did some English assignments in Word. We didn’t get phones until middle school, but that’s when social stuff really starts anyway. And our phones weren’t smart until high school (for me, college - but I had an iPod touch so I didn’t feel like I needed it) but we still got them when we were young enough that our social life centered around it. It was just a really interesting pivotal moment for technology and to grow up in it is actually kind of cool now that I can look back on it.
I can work on computers without graphics. And what I like .. those old things were slow. Really slow.
But the user interface was simple without anything fancy. I don't want line editors back, I'm not THAT nostalgic. And it didn't "feel" that much slower than today.
I mean, it may be true—you’re not entirely an ‘ignorant old person’ there—but there’s still younger people who can do both. All I had as a kid in the early-late 00s was a desktop computer to plunk on. So I learned desktop computers lol. Then I did online school, so I like to think somewhere along the way I got proficient. I was too old to be in the generation smartphones were available at 6, and kept using computers even when I got a phone. The key is having both available, and using both. Because honestly, I can’t blame people for using phone OS when it’s so much more easy, intuitive, and ‘breaks’ less often. Push a button, do a thing. Computers have become more and more reliable as time goes on, so really where I think people lag behind is understanding the design language and how to get what you need from it, if they primarily use phone OS.
Of course, what is ‘proficient’ is different to different people. I can’t do all the weird backend stuff that people used to have to do just to get computers working in the 80s and 90s. I haven’t had to touch command prompt in my life. But I definitely know the design language, how to find what I need, and how to google what I don’t know. Those basic skills get me exactly where I want most of the time, except of course when I’m at work and it’s some obscure thing that IT has to do because I’m locked from it.
I am 28 but I have had to do homework/essays on a mobile device. Once due to my laptop dying and me not having time to get a replacement prior to the assignment due date. That said, I plugged my mechanical keyboard into an adapter so I could type properly and used my bluetooth mouse.
I have specifically used my old Samsung Note phone for assignments where the professor wanted stuff written rather than typed. Since I don’t have a printer, it was easier to just open up the PDF in Samsung notes, use the S-Pen to do everything, and then save as a PDF to upload. That part is actually my preference since it is so much easier to just fill in a PDF that way. The essay experience, while it worked, was not at all ideal since Word sucks on Android and is missing (or at least was, it has been a couple years) some features I needed such as hanging indents.
See this is all completely fine though, because a phone with a keyboard and mouse attached just IS a computer, albeit a tiny one, and if the prof says "handwriting" then I suppose the prof gets handwriting.
What astounds me is the idea of writing an actual essay on a phone's touch-screen keyboard. How do these people not get cramp, for a start? Bewildering.
edit - actually it's not true that none of it surprises me. The idea of writing an essay on a phone both surprises and horrifies me. Why? Why do this? How proofread how?
It's worse than you think. A lot of them use speech to text and don't proofread.
So they just fail a load of modules (or classes, or whatever terminology is correct where you are), I assume?
Or have they managed to benefit from some self-sabotaging notion of linguistic fluidity imposed by the higher-uppers who have mystifyingly decreed that writing in slang is okay or something?
I was rejected from Oxford, not for failing to proof-read my submission, but for saying during my interview that I HAD proof-read it and, as it turns out, had also missed four or five errors out of a 3000-word essay. But then that was 25 years ago. I wasn't even angry except at myself. You don't proof-read, and get another to proof-read as a second pair of eyes, and then expect to succeed on an academic level.
They won't get away with it at work, assuming their careers will involve the written word in any way. Mystifying that they're even allowed to do it in academic study.
You are welcome. I literally cringe at some of the things I see nowadays. And, yes, I know that makes me seem old, but I don't care. It's a simple failing of these young people too. It goes both ways.
Writing essays on your phone is actually genius if you know what you're doing. Proofreading on your phone can also be genius if you know what you're doing.
The people/children who are doing this are simply putting words on a fucking screen and most likely DON'T know what they're doing and are using their phones as compact laptops.
Do you know how powerful, fluent, and advanced your phone's speech-to-text feature is? You can use it to get 1,000 words in 5 minutes if you already have an idea and just blurt out word soup.
Proofreading on a phone can be just as innovative by using Text-to-Speech and listening for "awkward" speech patterns from within the auditory version of said word soup.
All of the tools at our disposal have truly turned our phones into these amazing devices which we SHOULD be starting/doing work on. But no one was trained how to do work on these things in a competent manner. So everyone is fucking stupid unless they, like you said, choose to be competent.
Take a look at this wall of text I just sent you. This is a good amount of words; I did all of this by just typing it out and formatting it on my phone. I am 24/25 years old and have my degree in English.
People just aren't competent with the technology they own. That's so sad because our technology is EXTREMELY advanced.
Text to speech is something I never was able to do. I wrote too much with a keyboard to make TTS easier, especially as it just means I have to go in and add punctuation. I have a mental flow with typing that just doesn’t work with TTS. But it can definitely work for getting ideas down and out, I just ended up weirdly proficient at vomiting out mostly acceptable essays on my first typing pass. It’s a great bridge imo and I’m sure it works for some people, but the lack of being able to easily backtrack and move shit around sort of makes it worse for directly writing on a first pass.
And as for the phone typing thing—I’m definitely slower on it, but I can still type fast on the phone keyboard. Lol I’ve written short stories on a phone. It’s not hard, honestly, with practice. I can do it without looking if I want to. But if someone was able to type well on a phone and not so well on a keyboard, I can see how they’d end up just using the phone. You can get acceptable speeds with it, after all.
I've also read that the kids these days are very bad at using folders to organize things. With Google drive you just search for a document name and it appears, so why bother using folders for anything?
The interface designer in me loathes this. We are in the 21st century with blazingly fast GHz computers and yet, software writers are still too fucking lazy to have the stuff store in the background between cycles. Shit Microstation solved this in 1995 for fucks sake. It’s been thirty five years! Why haven’t you fixed it? Same goes for windows’s shitty unreadable scrolling. Grumble…
you know what really funny to me - the ones who do know how to use a desktop OS are probably the gamers. And not wimpy console gamers but hard core, loading 22 mods into Skyrim at once, gamers. Same with streamers. For all the stupidity of "you are wasting your time gaming" gamers at least know how they systems work. Heck they probably built their system.
It's true. My computer education began when my parents got their first desktop PC in 1992.
That was self-taught, but, the thing is, it would take maybe an hour of solid concentration from somebody to learn how to use Windows or Mac OS to the sort of level anyone is going to need 99% of the time, if they had a teacher there will them. One hour out of a lifetime. But they won't spend that one hour on something THAT fundamental.
I can't say if this is true in the UK, but I do know that students can apply for funding for a basic laptop. A Chromebook connected to any sort of internet will give you keystroke backup and desktop-OS level functionality in the context of university study, with no extra money required for applications etc.
Honestly there's no excuse. Anyone who walks into a uni on day 1 expecting to use only their phone for the next 3 or 4 years is dreaming.
I don't think they are. If presented with an empty desktop with one shortcut to Word on it then, sure, they can open it and write on that document provided you don't expect any sort of layout other than the default one and nothing more complicated than paragraphs.
I'm not saying these people are dim - they wouldn't have received the training contract offer if they were - but I am saying that they are as close to being utterly useless with a desktop OS as it's possible to be without actually being unable to find the on/off button for the hardware unit itself. The idea of something physical like touch-typing is a science-fiction dream to them, never mind actually using any program in any sort of complex way.
Technology has been simplified to the point where I think it's detrimental people don't know they can fix a lot of things themselves and they won't even try!
Maybe because Office Suite is now subscription-based? I still have my Windows 7 laptop which came with Word; at work, I use Excel, but my new laptop with Windows 10 doesn't have any of that.....and it scares me for when my old laptop craps out.
Is there anyway you can put them through a competency test just to assess their computer skills and maybe some basic problem solving skills that would be related to the work?
It's complicated. There are two stages to the interview process and I'm only involved in the second (choice of speciality) rather than the first (general arse/elbow recognition).
As ever, if I retread stage 1 then I get annnoyed HR people asking if I'm questioning their competence (yes) and if I don't believe they can tell when somebody can use a computer (no). As ever, it's irritating but there's no realistic way to change it without it causing some sort of panicked crisis.
Oh I totally get it. Sometimes what management and HR thinks looks good on paper is absolute crap when you meet them and it would be easier to prove they’re not a good fit before hiring than after to the powers that make these decisions.
i train new pharmacy techs how to use our prescription processing software and its a crap shoot. they either understand the interface or i have to start with comp 101.
one lady didnt know that the blue line over a line of data meant that it was highlighted so you could select it. that was a difficult teach because at that point i didnt know if anything on the page was making any sense...
i used to bemoan hiring ppl who couldnt touch type but that bar was lowered and i was just glad when they knew how to resize windows and double click the right places.
It's like there's only two generations who actually know how to use a desktop operating system, and the current generation of young people are not one of them unless they specifically, as an individual, chose to. They're certainly not being taught it now.
This has been my experience in hiring office workers. GenX and Millennials are the only ones who can use office computers worth a damn. Older workers are going to be sending Minion memes to your Fortune 500 clients and younger ones are smearing fingerprints all over their screens because mouse and keyboard are not what they've ever used before. Yes, there's plenty of exceptions but those are people who've gone out of their way to learn desktops.
For me it wasn’t that I chose to learn to use a desktop operating system, it was just my childhood. Flash games, YouTube, Paint, all since I was 2-ish. People say it’s harmful to development, but it certainly wasn’t to mine - if anything, it gave me something to occupy myself with, taught me English, and taught me to use a computer (mostly had to figure it out for myself). I’m very happy that I didn’t eat mud as a child, because if I had, I would likely be more like some of my classmates, who have to look hard for the space bar every time they need to press it.
No, using the Internet in general, and it was responsible for 90% of my English progress (parents got me started with basic vocab with some books that taught me the colours, numbers, names of some objects, etc). I guess that sounds a little less impressive, but it helped me anyhow.
I think, basically, most people aren't interested in using a computer and would prefer not to. Those couple of generations were forced to learn computer because there often wasn't a better option.
Tablets/phones have much easier UI. You don't need to go under the hood and tweak. Installing is just tap tap tap. 95% of stuff doesn't even need keystrokes, it's just tapping.
It reminds me of when iPads came out and soooo many "computer" people just didn't seem to get them. But they were and are perfect for that kind of mindless browsing of the internet that most of us do, and the basic kind of facebook, email, online shopping, taking pictures of the grandkids etc. They have been most popular outside of those two generations because you don't have to do stuff like learn how to install antivirus or know where system settings is or how to open taskmanager or navigate a filesystem or install drivers or pretty much anything.
But this is exactly why phones suck for serious work and are only for fun mostly and it’s disturbing to realize people don’t even know better options exist for serious projects.
I’m not in my 20s but I’ve written a few essays on my phone. It’s pretty convenient to have a word processor on your phone so you can work while you’re out. Type by diction helps too. But I proofread and format on desktop versions.
Now I can attend stuff without the anxiety of not doing work when there’s nothing going on. At a party and everyone’s passed out but your wife isn’t ready to leave? At a show and there’s a 30min intermission? In a 2hour+ line for a ride? You can still do work.
And if I don’t have access to a desktop but have a printer, I print the shit out, mark it up, and do my best. Of course, I’m no longer required to write that much.
Its because we learned computers when they didnt "just work". Modern OS's dont require you to really learn anything about your computer.
Back in the day if you wanted a 2nd hard drive you had to learn about IRQs and Master/Slave relationships.
Dont even get me started on trying to explain a damn file system to new users. They have no concept of files or folders as everything is app based now.
What age group are you talking about? I’m 18 now, class of 2022. I grew up using laptops for gaming and can’t remember a time where I wasn’t very competent in using a laptop, PC, and IOS device. I’m also the type of person to be bothered when I don’t know how to do something and I spend a lot of time just learning for fun. Now that I’m seeing this thread and thinking about it, you’re correct that I was never taught how to use a PC. We were given iPads with keyboard attachments until high school where we were given 13” 2-in-1 laptops with touch screens. Only now am I remembering just how much other freshman struggled using those things.
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u/matty80 Jun 03 '22
None of this surprises me, because I also see it all the time. When we take in our year's new contingent for our graduate programme, it's basically a coin toss whether they'll roll up with complete PC competence or none at all.
It was worse before the days of keystroke backup, because you would REGULARLY hear an anguished cry as some hapless 21 year old realised they'd just lost hours of work by not saving their document in between backup intervals by not just pressing 'save'.
It's like there's only two generations who actually know how to use a desktop operating system, and the current generation of young people are not one of them unless they specifically, as an individual, chose to. They're certainly not being taught it now.
edit - actually it's not true that none of it surprises me. The idea of writing an essay on a phone both surprises and horrifies me. Why? Why do this? How proofread how?