Comment by sevensor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sevensor | Hacker News Reader

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I came to the comments section planning to say the same thing. We used to throw around the term "computer literacy." It meant being able to use a word processor like WordPerfect and a spreadsheet like Lotus 1-2-3, and it meant understanding enough about file storage that you knew when it was OK to eject your floppy. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Basic competence with word processors and spreadsheets is no longer assumed. It's not unusual to meet a young person who, despite having been immersed in technology since birth, is unaware that Chromebooks support screenshotting and copy-paste between apps. (Source: spouse is a teacher whose students not-infrequently take pictures of the screen with their phones and email themselves the pictures to paste into documents.) There's a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had, just gaining what we used to regard as basic computer literacy.

(I would not recommend learning how to use floppy disks. That information is of almost no use to the layperson.)

Seems pretty obvious to me that we are going backwards.

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.

Remember many more people now use computers. That does mean that some of them aren’t as familiar with them, but a lot of that is just that everyone uses them a bit at least

I hang out on reddit subs for things like mechanical engineering, CAD, FEA, electronics and PCB design. It's not uncommon for people to be asking for help with their software (solidworks, fusion, abaqus, kicad, altium, etc) and posting a picture of their screen taking with a phone, apparently unaware of the "screenshot" feature of their OS. Often these are ME/EE students.

It's somewhat mind boggling.

Admittedly, as someone who takes screen shots at least weekly, I have taken a photo of my screen simply because it's faster and easier than the alternative.

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.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me depending on the specifics. If you already have reddit on your phone but not on the computer, then it is much more convenient just to take a pic and post it.

I'm a software developer and I'm one of these people. It's because I don't use the screenshot tool often enough to know the shortcut key or how to open it. I can't remember. It's faster to use the phone as the UI to access the camera is 10x more intuitive.

If I care enough to post something nicer I'll google how to do it.

CMD+shift+5 on Mac to open up the screenshot tool

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

Usually I use Greenshot on Mac but maybe I can map it to the default keystrokes

Oh thanks. Like I said, I won't remember this. Also I switch between 3 OS's so technically I need the shortcut key for gnome as well.

Gnome I can’t help with.

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

CMD+Shift+4 takes you directly to the snipping screenshot tool as well.

Yeah I remember 20 years ago not knowing how to screenshot, but to be fair it wasn't exactly obvious that the Print Screen button meant Screenshot, and I don't remember anything in Windows telling me what the Print Screen button did. But now the Snipping Tool is moderately obvious I think.

That's because the screenshot functionality in Windows is unusable. Don't you still have to do some strange dance with MSPaint to get a file out of it?

Emailing yourself things is also never going to go away because of how well it works.

Win-Shift-S - you're welcome.

Isn't it because they're using reddit on their phone and there's no easy way to transfer images from a computer to a phone?

To piggyback off of this, I kind of have a similar issue with coding bootcamps. They pump out novice programmers that are lacking basic tech literacy. Sure, these folks learned how to write a CRUD app, but you hire them and they can't setup SSH without massive handholding, etc.

Asking a software engineer to be aware of environment setup intricacies does not make sense. Once you hold their hands once by writing a comprehensive document, they will learn and not guess how you want things to be done. I write a lot of such documents. :)

> Asking a software engineer to be aware of environment setup intricacies does not make sense.

But expecting a software engineer to figure things out without extensive handholding is perfectly reasonable.

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