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We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

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Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#41

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ghaff wrote: post #28
Dalewyn wrote: post #7

Kind of related: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/27/2032200/students-do... Ultimately though, we need to remember that mice, keyboards, touchscreens, et al. are all merely compromises that were developed to let humans who speak human communicate with computers who speak computer. If we figure out an overall better way than the means before, it's natural they will be superceded. I do agree with the author that t…

On my desktop computer I have both a big Mac touchpad and a good (non-Apple) mouse. I switch back and forth between them depending on what I'm doing. If I'm on a laptop, I mostly stick with the touchpad.

amazingly, perhaps, on my laptop, i have a touchpad AND a perfectly viable 3 button button zone.

I do love the "real" mouse i use on my desktop system (logitech mx master 3), but there's no reason why a laptop can't "natively" support both mouse button and touchpad interaction styles.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#42

Post by wvenable »

Dalewyn wrote: post #10
SoftTalker wrote: post #3

The reason the original Macintosh mouse had only one button: so users would not need to remember which one to click. That was a Jobs mandate.

To be brutally honest: Job is (was?) right. To this day I see most people do not understand right-clicking, and why should they? Context menus are not in-your-face obvious, let alone right-click dragging and other esoteric maneuvers. I see something similar with touchscreens too: Most people don't know much beyond pinch to zoom. Any gestures or input involving 3 fingers or more is literal pig latin. Simplifying the m…

> To this day I see most people do not understand right-clicking, and why should they?

I think you see a lot less power-users these days in the heyday of the mouse oriented GUI. Even in my own usage of computers I find right-clicking less significant now than 25 years ago.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#43

Post by simonh »

jkubicek wrote: post #36
Dalewyn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be brutally honest: Job is (was?) right. To this day I see most people do not understand right-clicking, and why should they? Context menus are not in-your-face obvious, let alone right-click dragging and other esoteric maneuvers. I see something similar with touchscreens too: Most people don't know much beyond pinch to zoom. Any gestures or input involving 3 fingers or more is literal pig latin. Simplifying the m…

Jobs is still right! I switched to OS X in 2006 or so and have never enabled right-clicking on any of my mice (with the exception of the occasional game that requires a right-click action). For casual pointing, clicking, dragging, the one-button mouse does exactly what I want and nothing more. For more advanced mouse gymnastics, my left hand is usually hovering over Control/Command/Alt/Shift. I feel like I've got the…

When I got my second Mac I ordered a fancy Apple mouse because it sounded cool. The first thing I installed was a game, to try out the graphics, which used right-click to aim and then while holding that left click to fire.

Except the top of this mouse was one piece of metal that rocked left and right for left or right click. It was impossible to do both at the same time.

-> Bin

I’ve been on Macs for 16 years now and every single Apple mouse I’ve ever used was utter crap.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#44

Post by bdcravens »

jhbadger wrote: post #8
bdcravens wrote: post #6

Many have never used a floppy, updated a config.sys, or attached a serial, parallel, or ps/2 port. And it's perfectly fine.

Yes, but there are things that aren't so obsolete about using a computer that many young people don't know anymore and which are really still needed. I'm not the only person who has noticed that teaching the current generation of undergraduates that many of them don't understand the idea of a hierarchical file system, whether using the graphical folder analogy or as directories. They have trouble understanding that p…

Perhaps, but in many cases, that's become more and more of a detail that abstracted away. I feel like the breadth of knowledge, for better or worse, to implement an application today is so much greater that depth isn't as easily obtained. There's no shortage of 30-year pros flabbergasted by the amount of Javascript tooling being used, while the bootcamp grad can easily keep all that in their head but perhaps struggles with knowledge of DNS.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#45

Post by zokier »

jhbadger wrote: post #8
bdcravens wrote: post #6

Many have never used a floppy, updated a config.sys, or attached a serial, parallel, or ps/2 port. And it's perfectly fine.

Yes, but there are things that aren't so obsolete about using a computer that many young people don't know anymore and which are really still needed. I'm not the only person who has noticed that teaching the current generation of undergraduates that many of them don't understand the idea of a hierarchical file system, whether using the graphical folder analogy or as directories. They have trouble understanding that p…

> programs on computers save things in locations that you need to navigate to when trying to find it again

It bears keeping in mind that the traditional folders and documents desktop model is in no way fundamental or universal; its just one mode of computing that was popular in the turn of the century and steeply waning these days.

And its not just phones where the change is happening. Cloud services and other saas have had at least as much if not more influence here. And of course in enterprises people have been using all sorts of weird internal software, erps and crms etc, that might also not been very document oriented. And its not just modern time thing too, for more historical viewpoint you could look at mainframes (IBM big iron etc) which had all sorts of data store models, both from system and end-user viewpoints.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#46

Post by adrian_b »

Dalewyn wrote: post #22
dromio wrote: post #4

What is this article even trying to say? Clickbait title but the whole thing is about using a mouse? Yeah, interfaces are evolving. Most of the populace use a computer not for using's sake, but to accomplish a goal. Touchscreens are great for information consumption and free-form entry. Keyboards are good for text production. What is a mouse good for other than manipulating 2d objects?

>What is a mouse good for other than manipulating 2d objects? Precise control. I absolutely refuse to play an FPS or operate a productivity program (eg: Illustrator, Powerpoint) without a proper mouse. Trying to do that on a touchpad or a touchscreen is a hell I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies.

I agree about mouse vs. touchpad and touchscreen.

Nevertheless, there are alternatives to a mouse. A trackball can have very similar precise control while being more comfortable (for a productivity program; less suitable for a FPS, because the fingers are slower than the hand).

A stylus on a graphic tablet used in mouse mode (i.e. relative mode) offers even faster and more precise control than any mouse.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#47

Post by kkfx »

Mh... I agree with the title, not much with the content...

Back then as a student I was using laptops as desktop replacer, as many others, but when I seriously star using computers I realize that I need a desktop, with a decent keyboard and a thumb trackball. All wired. I realize how stupid big laptops are, since they should exists just for portability needs and on-the-go limited usages. NOT used docked, NOT used directly as a desktop replacer. The mouse here is somewhat substituted by touch screens for those who work on small laptops typically NOT on the go, but mouse means in many case just "consumption" not production.

Plan 9 have tried to be mouse centric, but ultimately fail because while some geek find the wow effect in drawing rectangles on a screen and filling them with live text it's just wasted time compared to free tiling modes like Emacs offer. Mouse is useful, yes, but definitively not the thing users forgot about computers.

Users forgot the CLASSIC desktop model, where they own the data and the system to manipulate data, bendable at their own will with few line of user-programming live code. Users have even forgot what's a file https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc... and as they are mostly unable to handle their own paper files they are equally unable to handle their digital files. They have lost the paper knowledge, but never acquired the computer knowledge. The mouse here count next to nothing.

Most people nowadays works like dumb terminals operators of the past with the important difference that the mainframe is not their own, but a distant systems owned by third parties "the cloud". Most people nowadays can't produce anything, only consume, choose stuff pushed in front of them by some ML system...

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#48

Post by guender »

Dalewyn wrote: post #38
bogwog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not knowing about this in the 90s was reasonable. Not knowing about it today is a failure somewhere in our education system/society/whatever.

I argue it's a failure to continue teaching something that humans do not and will not understand, and arguably also do not want in the first place. Computers for most people are just another household appliance or tool of their trade. They use computers to achieve certain tasks and they don't have time nor interest to figure out the details of how. They want the results, not the process. Abstraction of the file syste…

[dead]

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#49

Post by bdcravens »

bogwog wrote: post #24
zabzonk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i remember teaching people about hierarchical file systems in the early 1990s - so no not much has changed.

Well, not knowing about this in the 90s was reasonable. Not knowing about it today is a failure somewhere in our education system/society/whatever.

Stacks have grown easier, but larger. The size of the labor pool is larger, and there are more abstractions.

There was a time when programmers were all physicists, but I think it'd be silly to measure the talent of developers from the 90s by that standard. Ditto for measuring full stack developers by standard from a time when you needed nothing more than C and shell access to a cgi-bin folder.

Re: We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

#50

Post by bdcravens »

ghaff wrote: post #27
jhbadger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there are things that aren't so obsolete about using a computer that many young people don't know anymore and which are really still needed. I'm not the only person who has noticed that teaching the current generation of undergraduates that many of them don't understand the idea of a hierarchical file system, whether using the graphical folder analogy or as directories. They have trouble understanding that p…

And honestly the file cabinet metaphor probably doesn't go over very well either because that doesn't mostly apply today either.

Good point. For instance, object storage at first glance looks like the file cabinet, but that abstraction isn't entirely correct.
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