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

#301

Post by jpatokal » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 8:29 AM UTC

skgoa wrote: post #299

UncleEntity wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While that does simplify computers so that more people can use it in the short-term, it also strips away the whole purpose of computing, which is to empower people with a more advanced tool. Back in Sumeria they used to go on and on about how this newfangled writing thing would destroy civilization because it took the personal element out of interpersonal communication. Just because the majority of people don't con…

> Back in Sumeria they used to go on and on about how this newfangled writing thing would destroy civilization because it took the personal element out of interpersonal communication. I remember reading an old rant by someone (I want to say letter sent to a newspaper) who complained that the grammophone will destroy music.

In a sense it did: I'd wager that being able to play an instrument or sing well is rarer these days than it was before the gramophone.

That said, I'll still take Spotify and access to all the music in the world over random neighbors playing the fiddle any day.

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

#302

Post by cthalupa » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

I'm unsure how relevant my experience is as someone who has learned (some) 日本語 as a second language, but I find that I do not have any more trouble typing in Japanese on the keyboard than I do English. The IME in Windows and OSX is quite good at determining which kanji makes sense in context. In that case, it's as simple as pressing space/escape/enter to confirm the selection. I've always remapped capslock to escape because I'm a vi user, so I tend to gravitate towards that, but there's definitely choice there.

I do find the flick method to be significantly faster on a touchscreen, however, I'm still quicker with a regular qwerty keyboard.

I'm curious if we would see similar results if swype-style keyboards had as much domination among young people in countries that use Roman characters as the flick method does in Japan.

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

#303

Post by cthalupa » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 8:43 AM UTC

fireattack wrote: post #201

jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

>I find it considerably faster and easier to input hànzì on a smartphone than with a physical keyboard As a native Chinese speaker I find the opposite. >when the hànzì are presented directly above the on-screen keyboard It's basically the same for most of "proper" PC IME. They start to appear when you're typing pinyin, and then you choose with numbers or space (for first one). Showcase: https://i.imgur.com/gQGKw11.gi…

>you have to press some key (normally `enter` or `space`) to start "convert", and even another input to start choose between candidates

This doesn't match my experience, and I just double checked on Windows 10 and OSX 10.13 - I do not believe this experience has changed in at least the past 7-8 years.

I switch to Japanese hiragana input, and type 'sake', and 酒 appears as soon as I hit space or escape. I do not hit space or escape or anything prior to typing 'sake'. If I type 'yoroshikuonegaishimasu'　and hit space/escape/enter it becomes 宜しくお願いします, properly converting hirigana to kanji where it should.

I am using the default IMEs that come with Windows and OSX.

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

#304

Post by annabellish » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 8:53 AM 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…

>tolerable equivalent of Excel

You can get _actual_ excel. Google Sheets is also pretty decent. I don't think there's a libreoffice implementation, unfortunately.

>the shell

On Android, at least, actual shells are available. Most useful if you have root, but even without they're still shells, just ones without elevated permissions.

>or programming environment

There's, surprisingly, actually a few, though I don't think any are really competitive with x86 environments. There's plenty of good ssh clients if you're happy to remote somewhere else, certainly.

Notably, all of the above options I find basically intolerable on any touch device without an active stylus, and the latter two without a physical keyboard. Such devices certainly exist, though. A galaxy note with a bluetooth keyboard is surprisingly useful in a pinch, though you're always compromising with something that small.

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

#305

Post by ComodoHacker » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 8:55 AM UTC

owlmirror wrote: post #291

daniel-alex wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you have someone double-clicking on browser links (and other things) because that's how you open stuff in a computer, as I've seen multiple less-experienced people doing it.

well, I always found it a hassle to select texts in web documents for that reason. want to search a word in a hyperlinked headline? meh, the browser decides to open the link. even worse on touch enabled devices. double clicking stuff to open it does make sense, especially if they are more than just buttons.

Alt + select is a standard now in all major browsers.

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

#306

Post by Double_a_92 » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 9:02 AM UTC

phantom_oracle wrote: post #242

I'm going to go against the grain that is advocating for "keyboards are better" and say that maybe the touchscreen can be a gateway to a more efficient method of rendering text to a screen vs. a keyboard. Keyboards suck and cause your hands to be in an unnatural position for a long time.

The keyboard gives me the ability to directly "link" my mind to the text field. I don't have to actively type, just think about what I want to say. I couldn't achieve that with a touch screen yet.

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

#307

Post by unethical_ban » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #305

owlmirror wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, I always found it a hassle to select texts in web documents for that reason. want to search a word in a hyperlinked headline? meh, the browser decides to open the link. even worse on touch enabled devices. double clicking stuff to open it does make sense, especially if they are more than just buttons.

Alt + select is a standard now in all major browsers.

This is like showing fire to a caveman. Holy crap. I wish Firefox had a tooltip when I'm "dragging" links to say "Hey, I bet you're trying to select!"

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

#308

Post by yoz-y » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

carindistory wrote: post #142

jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

As a Japanese native speaker who has to enter many Japanese texts on a daily basis both on a PC and on a smartphone, I feel obliged to point out that the quality of an IME (a piece of software providing possible kanji/alphabet sequences for a given phonetic relization), is far better on a PC (its built-in MS-IME, to be precise) than on a smartphone (iOS). I started looking for some example to show how bad iOS's IME i…

iOS input for non-latin or less used languages is clearly lacking. There are third party keyboards which do better predictions, at least for Chinese there is Sogou which apparently also completes things like popular (trending) names and expressions.

But one does not even have to go that far, autocorrect for Slovak is quite a disaster to the point where I'd like to be able to disable it on per-keyboard basis.

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

#309

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 9:41 AM UTC

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…

> And it may sound old fashioned, but making things too easy for kids makes them less independent and less willing to put in the effort required for learning.

Yes, agreed. We're building a generation where even pulling your parking brake when you park is seen as "hard", not having a discoverable, hand-hold, guided experience is "inconvenient". Netflix even have a hard time making people update their cards when they expire or are cancelled.

Life is not a Steve Jobs utopia. Some things require work and persistence.

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

#310

Post by baud147258 » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #305

owlmirror wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, I always found it a hassle to select texts in web documents for that reason. want to search a word in a hyperlinked headline? meh, the browser decides to open the link. even worse on touch enabled devices. double clicking stuff to open it does make sense, especially if they are more than just buttons.

Alt + select is a standard now in all major browsers.

Well today I learned something. Thank you !