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Comment by skeledrew | Hacker News Reader

> 2nd row, 3rd down is Word. Start, 5 up, 1 right, 3 down is internet.

That's crazy. There's no way that's the case today though as learning about basic computers+office (which implicitly includes how to run apps) is pretty standard in schools, and is a requirement for relevant positions. And the alternatives have a mostly similar UI, so the only differences people really need to deal with is ribbon vs traditional toolbar and a few other minor items, which can be covered in a couple of meetings for the more dense employees.

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You'd be surprised. There are still quite a few 40-60 year olds working who never actually learned computers to begin with, and are still working by rote. On the other end of the scale are the 20~ year olds who never learned learned computers so much as they learned a tablet and a phone, and that trend doesn't seem to be turning.[1]

I had computer lessons in school, but I don't think those are universal any more, and that part of the curriculum has just been swallowed up by other lessons always using a tablet or Chromebook, meaning the kids never learn the foundation (to the extent there ever was one. It's not like I learned about common UI elements or anything back then. I figured those out by being interested in computers), but just learn what they have to by osmosis. This obviously varies depending on country and curriculum.

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems

There are still quite a few 40-60 year olds working who never actually learned computers to begin with [...]

Yeah but whatever the situation, if they're already working with an office suite in a work situation then retraining as needed should be an expectation and fairly straight forward.

> I don't think those are universal any more

In the Caribbean where I am, learning basic computer use and office is a requirement in high school, along with English and Math. It'd be strange and irresponsible if there are - reasonably functional - countries that don't ensure students get certain skills to be able to function in a modern workplace.

> It'd be strange and irresponsible if there are - reasonably functional - countries that don't ensure students get certain skills to be able to function in a modern workplace.

A non-zero percent of students come out of school not being able to read or write. A double-digit percentage of Americans are seemingly only being able to read at a level just barely above the absolute bare minimum level that could actually count as being able to read.[1][2] I know Americans are special, but I'd be surprised if the rest of the world is drastically different in this case (it's probably better, but my lived experience tells me many, many people are really bad at reading, and actually getting them to engage or try to extract information beyond the exact words that are on the page, is a really heavy task for them they have real trouble with). Going by the averages of the 2024 results of the PIAAC survey,[3] many places are better, but I doubt they've managed to eliminate that large bottom part which is close to illiterate.

If we already have trouble teaching kids to read, then there should be no surprise we're having even more trouble teaching them to use computers.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp

[2] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...

[3] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/do-adults-have-the-skil...

Well, to keep this discussion in scope, the illiterate have limited job options, particularly near zero for jobs that require computer literacy. That automatically handles the issue in contention for this context: if someone can't get a job involving computers then retraining isn't even relevant in their case.

Many, many people who are on that level of literacy are in fact working with computers. Ask anyone in L1 tech support what kinds of tickets they get. Many involve people not reading the text directly in front of them.

That sounds highly problematic. Probably why there are so many tech support horror stories. Still, if they can fake it enough to keep that job, then they can fake it enough to adapt to tooling changes. Or wash out and get replaced by another who hopefully understands the tool that their job depends on them using to properly do said job. But again also if the pay is low enough the employer probably doesn't care much about performance anyway.

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