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Comment by aaaaaaaaata | Hacker News Reader

Having a(n otherwise brilliant) 16 year old ask me how to attach a file to an email the other day really fucked me up.

It's bad out there.

I had a class of 20somethings in an intro to Python class and had to explain what folders and directories were. They had only used cloud storage and didn’t really have paths. Explaining that the path “c:\users\foo” wasn’t on everyone’s computer made me realize that people don’t organize documents and files.

Most computing devices people commonly use these days aggressively try to obfuscate away file and directory management so it doesn't surprise me that people lack this knowledge. Even Windows I have to turn a lot of default knobs to get it to show me the real paths and other popular platforms are clearly still worse in this regard.

This is by design of course. If it's extremely hard to get at the files and manipulate them they'll end up on the cloud, and eventually people will forget local storage is even a thing.

Why should a 16 year old know how to attach an email? I’m sure the only exposure to that kind of thing is whatever learning software their school uses, if any.

When I was that age the only thing I used an email for was logging into games or aim. I never had the need to send emails just create logins.

Is this really a huge surprise though? 16 years old nowadays just doesn’t use email like we did growing up. A bunch of other chat services has replaced it. I don’t think I used email aggressively either until college.

...you just made me realize I missed something.

They don't know the paperclip.

I need to add a text label to a few CRUD apps, brb

My daughter is about 3 and her hand symbol for a phone is a flat open hand against the ear. Most people who grew up with landlines would put their thumb and pinky out (corded phone).

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