I thought the title was a great pun, but didn't see Excel mentioned in the article. The article even mentioned low-code/no-code, which Excel - and offspring like Google Sheets - IMO is the original and still best tool in that space.
(I would not recommend learning how to use floppy disks. That information is of almost no use to the layperson.)
I always worried about this stage of my life as a non-software engineer that I would get lapped by the younger generation who had been immersed in technology since birth.
Smart phone immersion though not only seems useless but counter productive. No computer skills or attention span. At least I got a ton of computer skills while my attention span was shortened.
Is this going to change with Generation Covid? That seems like an easy bet no.
It's somewhat mind boggling.
A. On my computer, browse to the site I'm already using on my phone. Find the thread I was reading and the comment I wish to respond to, if applicable. Post the screnshot.
Or B, take a screenshot, upload it somewhere that I can access on my phone. Download it to my phone. Then share it on my phone through whatever means my OS makes available.
If I care enough to post something nicer I'll google how to do it.
Snip app on windows which you can pull up by hitting the windows key and typing the name
Both allow for easy cropping of a screen, and snip has a built in marker for drawing on the screenshot
I was in the phone screenshot camp with you until I realized these had the cropping feature built in. Not needing to clear my screen of information I don’t want included in the screenshot was enough of a boost to incentivize me to remember these
But no worries if you don’t, it was unsolicited advice and I won’t be offended if it’s ignored
Emailing yourself things is also never going to go away because of how well it works.
But expecting a software engineer to figure things out without extensive handholding is perfectly reasonable.
If you know these things and are curious about the world, it’s a quick path to being able to lead a technical project. Add a skill like design or domain knowledge and to the right team you’re suddenly a unicorn even if you’ve never officially typed a line of Python or JS.
I eventually did more reading on my own, but just knowing about this general concept made it so I could see when I had a situation where it would be useful. My first job was in an architect's office and I had a project that involved tracking details of a hundred different doors and windows of a historic building, so I used Access to create a database and saved so much time keeping track of everything!
In my current position as the combined accounting/HR department of a small company, I've been able to build a lot of tools using Airtable that help us track deals and commissions in a less-manual way, allowing us to scale the team a lot faster than we would have been able to otherwise.
Pipedream is another great tool because it has very granular coverage of the whole spectrum from no-code to real-code. At every step of the learning journey, there's an opportunity to get a little more sophisticated, but the whole time I'm also able to be productive in solving the business problems in front of me.
As someone who aspires to become a developer someday, it's really cool to be submitting PRs as part of my not-officially-technical day job :)
Excel occupies that magical space where the users aren’t really thinking about coding, they are thinking about solving their business problems (and don’t even realize they are coding)