A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards • Hacker News Board

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#181

Post by 21 » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

curuinor wrote: post #163

21 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A computer is a machine of profound alienation from the actual ability to create and the ability to use A funny thing to say, given that today a lot of content requires computers to produce, even abstract art. > Many people will die having used computers for 10 hours a day but not being able to really act with computers and create with computers How is that different from people who voraciously read countless books…

How many of these literature readers can't write? Not write well, can't write at all. How many can't take a video? Not take a good video, but take one at all. But you can use a computer without knowing how to create for it _at all_.

Not sure what your point is.

Coding is significantly harder than writing or pressing two buttons on a video camera, which is also visible in salaries - basic journalist vs. basic camera operator vs. basic coder

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#182

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #40

Having volunteered to teach kids coming from single-parent household with no computer at home, I've seen how the inability to type on a QWERTY keyboard with any modicum of speed (hunt-and-peck) actually limits them when we encourage them to 'iterate', 'try fast and fail', 'just code a line of something', or 'what will that do?'. If expressing your thoughts and intentions to the editor is painful and slow, it is a con…

Having volunteered to teach kids coming from single-parent household with no computer at home, I've seen how the inability to type on a QWERTY keyboard with any modicum of speed (hunt-and-peck) actually limits them when we encourage them to 'iterate', 'try fast and fail', 'just code a line of something', or 'what will that do?'. If expressing your thoughts and intentions to the editor is painful and slow, it is a concrete barrier to learning how to fail faster.

I can give you an opposite anecdote from personal experience. I learned how to program at 12 not learning how to touch type correctly. Guess what? I’ve been programming for 30 years and still can’t “properly” touch type. I’ve typed with one hand all of my life (not by choice) and it hasnt slowed my career down. With modern IDE’s and autocompletion, my typing speed hasn’t been a hindrance.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#183

Post by earenndil » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

flogic wrote: post #162

ssivark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids should be weaned off tablets just like infants are weaned off milk and induced to use their teeth. The thing that really bothers me is, as Alan Kay says: The ipad interface is designed for 2-year-olds and 82-year-olds and being forced upon everyone in between. See, eg: https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab... It is a de-evolution of problem-solving culture in the sense that people are disc…

This kinda captures one of my concerns. While I could care less about the particulars of how people interact with computers, I do find it concerning that modern devices seem to make general purpose computing less accessible. I love my phone but I haven't even found a decent calculator for it much less a tolerable equivalent of Excel, the shell, or programming environment. Part of me suspects it's an inherent limitati…

I dunno about android, but on ios I've found a perfectly capable calculator, and it looks like both ms and google have made their spreadsheet apps (or some version thereof) available. As for programming, I have no inclination to program on a tiny screen with an awful keyboard.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#184

Post by mikebelanger » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

bachbach wrote: post #95

mikebelanger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason for the decline in self-built in homes is advancements in modular home building. They're much better, and more economical than ever before. Even my Dad, who self-built two large homes himself, admitted it doesn't make sense to self-build. One is better off just working more in whatever specialty they do, and getting a modular home.

We're not buying those either. I've seen only one prefab in my area. We're not even building Tiny Houses. That movement has faded away as the land permission issue dominated over their advantages. Meanwhile: https://youtu.be/M73r32vK7C4 That's not a joke - there is a steep decline in being 'handy' - I'm doing everything I can to learn how to be but it still feels a bit unnatural. That lack of adaptability is like an…

Yeah to me the Tiny Home concept missed the point, on multiple fronts. Like you said, what's preventing younger cohorts from buying isn't the actual scale of existing/conventional homes, its the ability purchase of the land to begin with. Especially in America/Canada, where's there's still plenty of space for a regular-sized home. Whatever rises in material costs there may be, it can't be enough to overwhelm the loss of economics of scale that a Tiny Home construction would suffer from. After all, every facet of a regular is also going to happen in a Tiny Home - meaning much of the same initial overhead in installing, getting specialists, etc.

> Somehow not having a house is believed to be less impoverished than going and building one. Count me out! I don't think forking over half your earnings to a landlord is sophisticated.

I've never heard that belief - unless in the form of "land rich money poor" self-descriptions. I happen to think forking over money to a landlord is about as unsophisticated as its gets - despite it sometimes being the only tenable option. For many indebted that's certainly true.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#185

Post by cm2187 » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

strken wrote: post #15

SQL2219 wrote: post #2

This is similar to the stereotype of: young people are good with computers. Browsing Instagram is not the same as creating value through programming and complex problem solving.

I've always felt that young people are seen as good with computers because they're more confident and less afraid of failure, and that even if their only experience is instagram they're more likely to google a scary error message or click around at random in various menus.

I don’t know if it’s because I am old fart but my generation (born early 80s) would teach their parents how to use a computer or the internet when we were teenagers. The next generation might teach me how to use the latest gestures on iOS or instagram, that doesn’t seem to be a new technology or a useful skill to me.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#186

Post by cm2187 » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #30

SQL2219 wrote: post #2

This is similar to the stereotype of: young people are good with computers. Browsing Instagram is not the same as creating value through programming and complex problem solving.

The BBC love to divide the population into “digital immigrants” and “digital natives”, always with the subtext that the “natives” are superior. But their so-called journalists can’t even understand that the “digital immigrants” that they sneer at actually built everything and the “natives” are mere consumers

Agree. Though if we think about it, kids who were computer savy in the 90s were certainly more technologically sophisticated than computer savy kids now (when you have to actually install TCP/IP it makes you learn what it is!). But the population of kids with daily access to computers then was much lower than today. So now you have a much bigger base which on average is less technical, but because of its cheer size, there is probably a much greater absolute population of sophisticated kids now than 20y ago.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#187

Post by rustcharm » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

goda90 wrote: post #49

analog31 wrote: post #12

When I look at computer interfaces, I'm drawn back to the (probably mythical) story of the QWERTY keyboard, that it was designed to slow us down because our brains are faster than the mechanism of the typewriter. The modern GUI could be interpreted in that way too: Forcing us to direct the computer through a series of painfully discrete steps, to camouflage the fact that it can't interpret natural language. I've seen…

QWERTY was invented to move letters that were often close to each other in words to be further apart on the keyboard so as to prevent jams when two keys were pressed at once on a typewriter.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#188

Post by walshemj » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

21 wrote: post #181

curuinor wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of these literature readers can't write? Not write well, can't write at all. How many can't take a video? Not take a good video, but take one at all. But you can use a computer without knowing how to create for it _at all_.

Not sure what your point is. Coding is significantly harder than writing or pressing two buttons on a video camera, which is also visible in salaries - basic journalist vs. basic camera operator vs. basic coder

Well the UK Day rate for a Camera Operator (labour only) is around £420 for TV and £600 for film - which compares quite well for the contractor rates - and you wont fall foul or IR 35.

Journalists your right - there is a lot of young people who have the dream of being the next woodwood and Bernstein - and so news paper publishers take advantage.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#189

Post by crtasm » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

flogic wrote: post #162

ssivark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids should be weaned off tablets just like infants are weaned off milk and induced to use their teeth. The thing that really bothers me is, as Alan Kay says: The ipad interface is designed for 2-year-olds and 82-year-olds and being forced upon everyone in between. See, eg: https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab... It is a de-evolution of problem-solving culture in the sense that people are disc…

This kinda captures one of my concerns. While I could care less about the particulars of how people interact with computers, I do find it concerning that modern devices seem to make general purpose computing less accessible. I love my phone but I haven't even found a decent calculator for it much less a tolerable equivalent of Excel, the shell, or programming environment. Part of me suspects it's an inherent limitati…

Termux for shell on android.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#190

Post by nickserv » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

21 wrote: post #16

nickserv wrote: post #9

Do your children a favor and get them a "real" computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet. I've found it helps with several things. For one, I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces. Also, learning to use a keyboar…

> I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces. Why do you think this is a bad think? This is how kids learn how the world works, by trying the same thing in different contexts, like how small children put everything in their mou…

My worry with toddlers and touch interfaces is precisely because at that age they should be exploring the world, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling... By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a representation of one. I'm not against tablets, just that they shouldn't be given to toddlers at all, and to older kids once they are able to use the basics of a keyboard and mouse interface. Like walking before running so to speak.

Regarding looking things up in a book, it's a great skill to have, even from a purely enjoyment aspect, and I would certainly encourage kids to learn it. It doesn't mean not having access to the internet or voice search. Same way one can teach growing food or making fire with a bow, while still buying groceries every week and cooking on a convection range.

It's important in my view for kids to know where we've come from, to better understand the world as it is today.