Surely this is a wild exaggeration?
If you said "CLI" I would believe it... But they would have had to download/upload a file to apply to the university, create a resume, post a meme to reddit, move pictures from their phone to their computer, etc.
I wouldn’t quite say they didn’t know what files were, but they had a lot of trouble with the ideas like: you need to point your IDE at the file you want to edit (so, if you save-as in various locations, only the last one will actually reflect your last round of changes).
VSCode can also read from files which are inside a zip, but can’t write to them, which… seems obvious but I 100% get why somebody who is seeing zipped files for the first time would find it confusing.
I wouldn’t say it was as straightforward as the story of “hopeless engineering students” would have you believe, but there were some puzzles. Most of them knew enough to get into weird situations, which got me lots of headaches… but, breaking your computer is the first step to learning how it works, so shrug.
I’m not very familiar with the details of the zip format, just uncompressed/compress when I need to modify a zip. But, if you want to modify a file inside a zip, there will be some bookkeeping, right? I guess it would at least be necessary to make sure the modified file doesn’t start to overlap the entry after it…
To be clear, in my class it's a small fraction who struggle like this, but it's real.
Like, imagine using an iPad your entire childhood, and then maybe getting a Chromebook. You just aren't going to have the same level of comfort with what files are or how they might work, as you don't really ever think in their terms.
Do you need to actually "download a file" to apply to a University, or is it a captive web form now? If you do, imagine doing it on an iPad: you download the file and it goes into some transient Downloads UI before getting opened directly by your word processor. Certainly creating a resume doesn't cause much interaction with "files".
You certainly don't, anymore, use files to move pictures from your phone to your computer: you use a cloud service like iCloud Photos or Google Photos, which automatically "syncs" all of your data from your phone to the same app on your desktop.
If you want to create a meme on reddit--which you certainly are doing on your phone or iPad, as a computer is complicated and lame--you aren't using generic tools to edit files you saved to disk: the closets thing to a filesystem you are working with is your camera roll, working in an app that let's you add remix from it and then saves the result back to it.
People at companies like Apple have gone to such great lengths to hide the complexity--and limit the ways of composition--of software that, at best, "Files" is just a sort of confusing app you might sometimes get forced to use only if you have no other reasonable option, and so you don't have a mental model for it; and even then, it's separate from where your data "really is".
They also do it in confusing, inconsistent, and self-serving ways. What does it mean to "save data" like an image or a document? In Google Photos, it means you associate a copy of it with your Google account. In MS Office by default, it means you stick it in OneDrive.
Everyone wants the "happy path" of data storage and retrieval to lead directly to their own proprietary systems with their own proprietary implementations of basic file-like operations. No one wants the default to be the tried-and-true method of local files and folders.
Which one would a corporation pick to maximize its profits?
(Playing devil's advocate, it is easier to support backup and restore via the cloud, vs. having end-users corrupt/lose their files, then clamor for end-user support)
In my kid's mind (and in the mind of her peers in middle school), if you have to open up the Files app to solve a problem, or Windows Explorer, that's seen as dark wizardry that only hardcore computer fixers do. Kind of like how the command line was thought of 20 years ago: Only sorcerers use the command line! Well, now, only sorcerers browse their hard drive for files.
> Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work.
Even reading this back when it was published, it came across as drivel. Now, we have doomscroll-optimized short-form video which does precisely what Prensky recommended, and nobody in their right minds would suggest that it is healthy/good/beneficial for kids to consume that kind of media.
It is not a insurmountable hurdle, but it is interesting in the sense that things like git, programming, etc, all deal with files and filesystem hierarchies, and the students have never seen this, so it makes it one more thing to add to the (ever growing) list of things they need to know before we jump in.
I taught some cybersec classes maybe 4-5 years ago and while students definitely struggled with some (what I would consider) "basic" stuff like CLI, variables, loops, etc... no one had an issue with directions like "copy this file to here", "extract the files to there", "set up this directory and point this tool to it", stuff like that.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/auu67x/p...
I would have thought so, too. Until just yesterday.
Someone from a department in my company e-mailed me a Word document with a picture of a PDF icon in it. She thought that would send the PDF document to me.
At first I thought it was the 1990's again when secretaries were first getting computers, and would do things like hold a piece of paper up to the computer screen in order to "scan" it in.
So I looked up her profile in the company intranet. She's 30. Then I remembered what I'd read so often here on HN: That young people grew up with phones and tablets and the whole "desktop" paradigm is foreign to them.
Well, those people are growing up and landing real jobs now. And so now I guess the burden of teaching basic computer literacy falls on the companies again, just like it did in the 1990's.
Professionally I’ve been in charge of interviewing foreign candidates from those headhunter type programs. I’ve legitimately interviewed people who claimed years and years of experience but had no measurable computer experience.
My high school aged family has next to no idea how to do anything on a computer but use a browser.
Not sure about the others, but most are about consuming memes(or searching for a gif to post), the typical poster to viewer percentage is only about 1% to 2% on places like Reddit.
Also, why would they move pictures from their phone to their computer(assuming they even have a personal PC and not a school issued Chromebook)? They do everything they need to with the image on the phone.
Switch "post a meme" to "download a meme", or whatever. My point is that they have very obviously interacted with, moved, copied, and deleted files.