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82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

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Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#92
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen these exact behaviors countless times, ever since I was the "kid who knows computers" (in the 90's) trying to walk adults through using them. Oh, and when you ask them to "look at the screen", they're only mentally able to process a 2-square-inch "window area" at any given moment. So you first have to direct their gaze, very specifically, before you can actually expect them to read and process anything. (Of…

As much as I'd agree with the symptoms you guys are describing when it comes to my parents and grandparents, I don't think this is much of an age problem at all. The same thing happens to my kids when I present them with a bash shell. They don't understand how to read the instructions, and they're uncomfortable with text commands. They don't want to type 'man' or 'help', and they give up very quickly. Everything they…

When talking with people who struggle, I talk about the that the difference between being able to see a footprint to track a new animal in the forest and you being able to use a somewhat novel computer interface are based on the same principles of experience and ignoring the piles of useless information.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#93

Very inspiring, this is her website: http://marchan.travel.coocan.jp Also previous discussion and video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14995333

Kind of off topic, but I've always found Japanese domain names to weird. They always seem to be subdomains of someone else's site. Why is this?

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#94

Very inspiring, this is her website: http://marchan.travel.coocan.jp Also previous discussion and video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14995333

Kind of off topic, but I've always found Japanese domain names to weird. They always seem to be subdomains of someone else's site. Why is this?

She is probably using some hosting service provided by Japaneses company. edit: the company hp is cocan.jp a lot of personal home page are host by them. since normal Japanese don't exactly know how to use heroku and AWS.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#96
post #22

I wonder how much of brain elasticity in as adults is just due to attitude. I generally find kids more eager to jump into new things, while adults are more stubborn and complacent towards new experiences. Once you have money or kids it's a lot easier to just have someone else do it for you. Still, at 82 I imagine most people will start developing issues with memory so it probably isn't an easy feat, and she's found m…

Eh, you can have all the attitude you want, but I'm watching my mother wither away with dementia (she's 81). There's nothing attitude-wise that is involved there. It's just luck whether you can still do coding at 40,50,60,70+. You WILL reach an age where you will not be mentally capable of doing all the things you want to do whether that is coding or driving a car. Maybe science and modern medicine can save us, but i…

Out of curiosity, did she retire before the dementia or after? It's by no means scientific, but among all of the old people I know, the strongest predictor of dementia would be retiring. I haven't been able to find any studies on the relationship between stopping working and the onset of dementia, although it seems like working or keeping busy might somehow help stave it off.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#97
post #83

If I understand correctly, she started out with Swift as her first language? Wakamiya soon bought programming books and learned Apple’s Swift programming language through lessons with a programmer, nearly 200 miles away from her home in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, via Facebook Messenger and Skype.

Looks like she has been interested for many years

"This wasn’t the first time that Wakamiya took on a challenge. She’s been dabbling in the tech field since the age of 60."

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of off topic, but I've always found Japanese domain names to weird. They always seem to be subdomains of someone else's site. Why is this?

She is probably using some hosting service provided by Japaneses company. edit: the company hp is cocan.jp a lot of personal home page are host by them. since normal Japanese don't exactly know how to use heroku and AWS.

In case you're not aware, you're being downvoted for "Jap". Perhaps you were just abbreviating "Japanese", but it's considered offensive.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is probably using some hosting service provided by Japaneses company. edit: the company hp is cocan.jp a lot of personal home page are host by them. since normal Japanese don't exactly know how to use heroku and AWS.

In case you're not aware, you're being downvoted for "Jap". Perhaps you were just abbreviating "Japanese", but it's considered offensive.

That is good to know, I am not from the states. I thought Jap was abbreviate for Japanese what have the internet done to me lol.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#100
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen these exact behaviors countless times, ever since I was the "kid who knows computers" (in the 90's) trying to walk adults through using them. Oh, and when you ask them to "look at the screen", they're only mentally able to process a 2-square-inch "window area" at any given moment. So you first have to direct their gaze, very specifically, before you can actually expect them to read and process anything. (Of…

As much as I'd agree with the symptoms you guys are describing when it comes to my parents and grandparents, I don't think this is much of an age problem at all. The same thing happens to my kids when I present them with a bash shell. They don't understand how to read the instructions, and they're uncomfortable with text commands. They don't want to type 'man' or 'help', and they give up very quickly. Everything they…

Agree, they just not familiar the computer as us.
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