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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

My kids are both in high school right now. My observation is that they are largely platform agnostic. Of course the browser runs on any platform. That's their "terminal" for everything. They use Google Docs on whatever computer they're sitting at, and have figured out its collaborative features.

Just a few years ago it was very important for them to have a computer with the latest version of Office installed on it -- one for every kid in case they both got assignments at the same time -- but the teachers are now largely comfortable with Google Docs or Whatever. That 3-user Office 2010 license is probably my last commercial software purchase ever.

So it seems that the choice of platform is something that the grown ups worry about, but it doesn't affect the kids at all. Their school seems to have gone with Chromebooks.

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Thank God this finally happened.

About 8 or 10 years ago, my older daughters insisted that OpenOffice wasn't a "real" word processor, since it didn't look like MS Office on XP, and we were then running Ubuntu at home (since switched to OSX, but whatever...). Then one year, the school got "Vistafied", and the whole UI they were used to got scrambled. At that point, their eyes were opened, and they stopped complaining about the system at home being "different", as well as having to pay attention to using a compatible format, since MS graciously made them painfully aware of all that, anyway.

They are now pretty used to doing stuff on the net/cloud, with whatever disposable device/UI is around that year.

And my youngest has been using Chromebooks at his school the last 2 or 3 years.

And this is why I find the whole FOSS fretting about UI consistency a fool's errand. If anyone has stuck with Windows since the 9x days they will know that UI consistency matters less than rote habits and backwards compatibility.

Sure. But the web app UX is clunky; it wouldn't be acceptable to have a desktop word processor with Google Docs' quality. It's a little sad if this is where the bar is set for kids, all in the name of cross-platform.

Indeed, what people are willing to give up in terms of UX, in return for other benefits (including cost), is something that continues to surprise the development community.

From what I've observed, just watching what the kids do, it seems that function trumps form. What Google Docs does for them is provide access to their documents anywhere, and by anybody within their collaborative group. They don't need a lot of the typesetting features provided by MS Office -- if they can't express something in one way, they find another way to express it.

It's only been recently, that we can test whether people are willing to give up UX, because MS Office had the same UX at all of its price tiers. For the same general functionality -- typesetting -- folks weren't willing to put up with the UX of Libre Office, which was clunky in its own way. So I suspect that what Google Docs offers is based on function and not price.

For standard school papers and reports there's no reason the standard text editor on whatever platform (e.g. Wordpad, or its Mac equivalent) should not be acceptable.

About 6 years ago I showed my oldest son (in 8th grade at the time) basic LaTeX to write papers and he would turn in the PDF files.

Sure it's all moved to Google docs now and that's fine, but the requirement for office suites never made sense.

I think that things have gotten a lot more relaxed, even within the time period that my kids have been in school. At first, formatting requirements for paper documents were simply applied to computer documents, and word processing was considered to be a preparation for college or the workforce.

I remember grumbling: "Why are they wasting their time learning skills that will be obsolete by the time they reach college?"

Even outside of school, word processing has gotten less important. The main "word processor" today is the e-mail program. Remaining uses for word processing include documents that nobody will ever read, and documents where there is a mandatory template, such as work instructions.

If anyone were seriously developing an educational app they would make it browser based so any computer could access it.

Everything that I've seen so far is browser based. The question is whether it works on every browser, on every platform.

Same thing at my daughter's high school, where they just make sense. Low tech support, almost disposable hardware, instant software updates.

But next year is college so the choices are Windows or Mac?

That's an interesting question. I'd like to know too. At a K-12 school, that has chosen a particular platform, there's an implicit commitment to support that platform from an IT standpoint.

At a university, where it's "bring your own," you're more likely to run into situations where somebody's technology has only been tested on a handful of mainstream platforms and browsers, and if you don't have one of those, then your problems are your fault.

You'd hate to get the call: "I need to finish an assignment by tonight at 11 PM, and the software only runs on Mac or Windows."

With that said, there are low cost Windows computers that are almost throwaway, and quite robust. My carry-around computer is an Asus Windows notebook that I got for 100 bucks refurbished.

Check if the college has preferred vendors. Mine will repair your dell, mac, or Lenovo ThinkPad for free (you still pay for new parts required) if you own one of those.

They also often have special purchasing deals. Though the savings are not great it's something.

Most colleges will have no preference for Mac, Windows, Linux but there may be some courses or majors where there is an advantage to one platform over the others.

Not necessarily. Most universities these days have plenty of computers on campus to use and are running the software required. I also know if I do end up requiring to install some software the school doesn't have already (which hasn't happened yet) they have virtualbox installed so I could go spin up a VM and do it through that. I've never felt like I had to own a personal computer. Granted I have never wanted to sit around on campus all day doing my assignments so I go to my apartment to work on them.

If all they are going to be using their computer for is note taking and essay writing a chromebook will be just fine. If a prof requires an assignment in the word format (which I've had one do sadly) you can still export a google doc in the word format or you can just go to one of the many computer labs and just copy paste into a word file. With a little bit of work you can even run Ubuntu on them. I've actually worked on a good number of my programming assignments from my chromebook.

If they're doing some kind of arts program then you are probably looking at getting a Mac as most prof seem to expect that's what you are using.

If you just want a safe pick go with something running Windows.

Agreed! My wife is a 7-8 grade teacher in a private school and the people that have the most trouble with technology is, surprise, the adults. The kids pretty much get along with anything you give them access to. This means that Google Docs works fine, it even works on their home computer or the one at the library. And my wife does everything she can in Google Docs so that they even turn in their homework online. It's a win-win.

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