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From novice to master, and back again (2013)

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Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#141

Post by eurasiantiger »

feoren wrote: post #131
eurasiantiger wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cut me some slack, I was referring to our beloved contemporary devices when I was saying modern computers in A, so the comparison is a bit apples and oranges.

I'm not trying to nitpick you here; I'm genuinely confused why "Computers are all 1s and 0s under the covers" is a pet peeve of yours! It sounds like you mostly agree with the statement, so I'm just not sure why it would bother you.

Because I have seen so many laypeople operate off the misconstrued idea that computers literally work like that!

Granted, many of these people have been around since before typewriters and phones were a common thing, but the ”1s and 0s” explanation does not offer anything tangible for people who cannot see the trees from the forest (sic), and thus it only widens the ”digital divide”.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#142

Post by alpaca128 »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #141
feoren wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to nitpick you here; I'm genuinely confused why "Computers are all 1s and 0s under the covers" is a pet peeve of yours! It sounds like you mostly agree with the statement, so I'm just not sure why it would bother you.

Because I have seen so many laypeople operate off the misconstrued idea that computers literally work like that! Granted, many of these people have been around since before typewriters and phones were a common thing, but the ”1s and 0s” explanation does not offer anything tangible for people who cannot see the trees from the forest (sic), and thus it only widens the ”digital divide”.

From what I've seen the problem is more being that people just take that as the whole truth without considering more interesting ideas that are based on it and make it actually work. But I don't think this contributes to a "digital divide", people who aren't particularly interested in computers wouldn't be more excited with different wording.

In my experience the best thing to get people interested in computers is to show them more than MS Word in school. Fortunately a substitute teacher was more competent than that and absolutely blew my mind with a for loop.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#143

Post by jakey_bakey »

hcks wrote: post #17

This reminds me of an old joke I heard a while back, which is that the opposite of "it's like riding a bike" is "it's like the UNIX command line". No matter how many times you do it, you will have to re-learn it every single time.

Reminds me of a peeve I had with the Apple docs when they described Bash like riding a bike (but in a different metaphor - it's good to get around somewhere easily but won't take you as far as an application language)

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#144

Post by agumonkey »

lolive wrote: post #120
agumonkey wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this kind of job is very memory constrained you get into a task, you cram stuff in as you go, you finish it, and then you dump everything go onto another task. i find my most valuable skill is to slow the pace to ensure retention of information

Still less efficient than dumping your piece of knowledge insomzthing like a second brain, aka personal knowledge management. The tricky part is whether to write down everything and make your notes too long to read/follow, or summarise things with the risk of forgetting an important piece of info [why you should do this or that, what you should NOT do, what additional piece of knowledge is required, etc]. The art of…

It boils down to the same issue. Whether you store data or not, your brain is a bottle eck. And managing notes would require the same skill as curating your efforts.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#145

Post by eurasiantiger »

alpaca128 wrote: post #142
eurasiantiger wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I have seen so many laypeople operate off the misconstrued idea that computers literally work like that! Granted, many of these people have been around since before typewriters and phones were a common thing, but the ”1s and 0s” explanation does not offer anything tangible for people who cannot see the trees from the forest (sic), and thus it only widens the ”digital divide”.

From what I've seen the problem is more being that people just take that as the whole truth without considering more interesting ideas that are based on it and make it actually work. But I don't think this contributes to a "digital divide", people who aren't particularly interested in computers wouldn't be more excited with different wording. In my experience the best thing to get people interested in computers is to…

I think oversimplification is a major contributor to magical thinking, and magical thinking lends itself to continued failures to understand things, especially in the context where the computer is not operating normally.

Imagine if people generally understood that automobile combustion engines work by ”combusting fuel” without knowing anything more about their car.

That’s absolutely true in a sense, but if we left things at that, drivers would probably be inclined to think some kind of magic is happening, because that’s what science thought of combustion for a long time! (see ”Phlogiston theory”)

I wonder how those drivers would explain the functioning of the pedals and the shift knob.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#146

Post by SamPatt »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #123
404mm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst: you find your own answer that says: “Nvm, fixed the issue.”

I have a notesfile on how to fix/debug things. When I started it, I would write things down after I fixed something and figured I'd need to remember it later. Problem was, I would often forget to write things down, or naively think "that was quick to find out, don't need to write it down", which is a classic mistake of confusing post-facto mindset with pre-facto. So now when I wonder how to do a thing, I first write…

This is the way.

I make a new markdown file for every program / VPS login command (the entire SSH command with custom ports), and really anything which I know I would need to search through bash history down the road to do it again.

Those files are sorted into a handful of folders which allow me to quickly find all these programs / commands quickly.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#147

Post by drewzero1 »

alex_smart wrote: post #39
hinkley wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a little offended by people who think stackoverflow is a character flaw. I go there because it will tell me things like if you get the arguments to ‘dd’ wrong you’ll zero out the drive you were trying to back up. That the function breaks if you pass in null for the second parameter. Or that it simply doesn’t work properly.

I think that using dd is a character flaw.

What would you recommend as an alternative for disk imaging in Linux? I'm in the process of migrating a herd of PCs from HDDs to SSDs and would appreciate suggestions.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#148

Post by alpaca128 »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #145
alpaca128 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen the problem is more being that people just take that as the whole truth without considering more interesting ideas that are based on it and make it actually work. But I don't think this contributes to a "digital divide", people who aren't particularly interested in computers wouldn't be more excited with different wording. In my experience the best thing to get people interested in computers is to…

I think oversimplification is a major contributor to magical thinking, and magical thinking lends itself to continued failures to understand things, especially in the context where the computer is not operating normally. Imagine if people generally understood that automobile combustion engines work by ”combusting fuel” without knowing anything more about their car. That’s absolutely true in a sense, but if we left th…

You're probably going to have trouble finding an average car driver that can explain to you how automatic transmission works.

> Imagine if people generally understood that automobile combustion engines work by ”combusting fuel” without knowing anything more about their car.

No need to imagine.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#149

Post by eurasiantiger »

alpaca128 wrote: post #148
eurasiantiger wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think oversimplification is a major contributor to magical thinking, and magical thinking lends itself to continued failures to understand things, especially in the context where the computer is not operating normally. Imagine if people generally understood that automobile combustion engines work by ”combusting fuel” without knowing anything more about their car. That’s absolutely true in a sense, but if we left th…

You're probably going to have trouble finding an average car driver that can explain to you how automatic transmission works. > Imagine if people generally understood that automobile combustion engines work by ”combusting fuel” without knowing anything more about their car. No need to imagine.

Now imagine how much safer roads would be if people understood much more about their cars!

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#150

Post by hipjiveguy »

404mm wrote: post #68
Underphil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse : You Google a question and realise you yourself asked it many moons ago and it never got answered.

Worst: you find your own answer that says: “Nvm, fixed the issue.”

I make a habit of turning every question I have, that I don't find an answer to in 30 min, a question AND answer on stackoverflow/stackexchange

And many times, even years later, when I google the answer, I google my name, stackoverflow, and the topic, and kapow - answer received :D

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