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Comment by jimt1234 | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm. The first time I saw an automatic spellchecker was probably with WordStar around 1989, and it blew me away. How can the computer know all the words? That's insane! Sounds lame, but it's true. It was a different world.

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Since you're old enough, here's a question for you. Do you remember if at the time the first spellcheckers were invented, people were negative on spellcheckers, because that would mean that soon people would stop learning how to spell and just general dumbing down?

It seems that anything that helps people gets this reaction these days. On the one hand, the argument 100% resonates with me. On the other hand, spelling isn't really the end, is it? It's just a means to an end, so what's wrong with making the mean easier? Did people worry that you'd stop knowing how to plant potatoes when trading was invented? EDIT: The example doesn't make sense because agriculture is newer than trading, but you got the idea.

“The careless, the inept, the spelling disabled will be able to survive in a world of words by relying on computers to conceal their own weaknesses.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/06/02/t...

Not as much with spellcheckers because even when they started to get popular, it was apparent that many people cannot spell English. So it was very natural.

People pushed back on the grammar checks when they landed in Word.

Before that, people pushed back on calculators in secondary schools. This was a huge point of contention all classes except trigonometry, and calculators were definitely not allowed in the SAT/ACT.

> People pushed back on the grammar checks when they landed in Word.

Word’s grammar checker has improved quite a lot. But I absolutely hate the style checker and its useless advice. Yes, I know how the passive voice works and yes, it is appropriate in this sentence. Also, it’s not really a problem in English but Word still can’t do spaces properly so it wants to put normal spaces everywhere and it’s fucking ugly. I wish it would spend as much time fixing inappropriate breaking spaces (in English as well).

Word's style checker trying to enforce US norms, when the Australian dictionary is in use aggravates me.

Yes, we use the Oxford comma. We teach it in our schools. Stop trying to tell me its not necessary - the audience expects it!

It was just as useless here in the states:

"Sentence fragment, consider revising"

It's dialog in a story you ignorant clod.

What I think is one should question if something is the point of the exercise.

I'd argue that where writing spelling is something completely arbitrary and thus of no fundamental importance. Arithmetic is the same way, lots of algorithms to do that and they are all valid. So calculators and spell checkers are fine. And you should use them.

The same is not true for grammar. Getting AI to write an essay for you.

I don't remember any particular negative reaction to spell-checkers like the 'calculator panic'.

Perhaps partly because most schoolkids then wouldn't have been using word processors as their main writing tool at school and people using them in a corporate environment were pleased not to make embarrassing errors in their emails.

I remember that! People were worried we’d all forget how to spell stuff.

> because that would mean that soon people would stop learning how to spell and just general dumbing down?

I'd argue that negative people where correct. People can't spell anymore, not even with a spellchecker. Maybe they never could? I'm not against spellcheckers, I think they are amazing, but they haven't helped much.

WordStar is not the problem, StarWars is. Popular culture has become so vapid that when it comes to writing and the thinking behind writing, most people fare worse than an LLM. I know that old people have been saying this basically since ancient Greece, but it bears repeating: the youth is lost.

As I recall, there was some, but not a lot of FUD around spellcheckers, mostly because personal computers were still relatively new. Most GenX parents (Boomers) didn't even know what personal computers were yet, so they didn't know enough to be concerned. (I grew up in Missouri, which was the Digital Stone Age back then.) At the time, I think their complaining was more focused on MTV and video games.

However, also sounds weird, but I recall myself and some of my peers questioning spellcheckers, "Why do I need this?", because spelling was a primary mission of our education. We were all raised constantly being tested on spelling. In fact, I think I disabled the spellchecker on my old-ass 286 because it caused delays in the overall experience.

It was the opposite experience for me. Before spellcheck was commonly part of the web browser, I would go back and reread some very early emails and/or usenet posts from myself. And realize how atrocious my spelling was.

I actually consider spellcheck to have improved my spelling dramatically over the years. The little red squiggles under words have helped me to recognize my misspellings, especially the words that are hard for me to get right consistently.

I remember hearing this as late as the early 00s. I'd buy electronic dictionaries and spell checkers at yard sales and things like that, and use them in class. Multiple teachers were disapproving of it, despite it basically just being a paper book dictionary in a small, TI-92 shaped device. 10 year old me never saw how flipping through some obnoxiously heavy book in the back of the classroom was better than just punching in a few letters, hitting the "show definition", and ensuring I was spelling and using "curmudgeonly" properly.

Same went for using MacWord vs AppleWorks. MacWord had a built in dictionary, AppleWorks didn't.

I think this happens every time something gets automated away, and in a way it's true. I'm sure a lot more accountants knew 123x27 by heart before than they do now. The problem is LLMs take out the whole process of thinking, and that is going to be a problem: you generally need to think even when you're not in front of a screen.

I had an English teacher who allowed submissions only on typewriter or hand-written with spellcheckers mentioned as the reason.

I had the same thing when the Encarta CDs started to include pronunciation tests. You'd get a word, speak it in the microphone, and get a "score" on how well you pronounced that word. Knowing what I know now, it was probably pretty inaccurate and hand wavy, but in the early 90s that was an absolutely amazing experience for an ESL person.

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