Things People Believe About Computers | Hacker News Reader

Things People Believe About Computers

terminally-incoherent.com

39 pointsklimeryk54 comments

Computers and especially software are really difficult to explain because of the sheer amount of abstraction involved, it doesn't help that software often presents abstractions to users that do not reflect the underlying mechanism.

You will tend to find misconceptions about things very commonly amongst even people who work in IT as their livelihood. If you ask 100 mechanics how a 4 stroke engine works you're likely to get approximately the same answer. Ask 100 IT people or developers what an operating system does and you'll get 100 different ones.

Ask them about the 4stroke and you get even more differences.

With something like that it's easier to know how much you know. I could probably give a reasonable description of it, I might get some specifics wrong or not be able to go into as much detail as someone more knowledgeable but at least it wouldn't be completely insane.

I probably have more misconceptions about computers that I'm not even aware of.

Suck squish bang blow.

Was hoping someone would say this. I would love for someone more clever than I am to come up with the OS equivalent.

Suck the money out of your wallet

squish 10 gigs of shovelware and trialware and just junk onto the hard drive

bang it crashes and needs reinstallation on a regular basis

blow. windows blows.

Malloc, push, shebang, go slow

Some ideas:

Isolate, abstract, interface.

Devices, memory, file-systems, processes.

fork, malloc, open, read, write.

push, pop, thrash, swap

Input, output, store, retrieve.

Or maybe Input, store, retrieve, output, which is a little cuter.

> Ask 100 IT people or developers what an operating system does and you'll get 100 different ones

An operating system represents the abstraction layer between hardware and software applications, its purpose being to provide on userlevel the APIs needed for efficient interaction with hardware. Modern operating systems also provide higher-level components or services that apps can reuse, plus bundled junk because an OS is perfect for achieving vendor lock-in and for shoving apps and services down on people's throats, being a natural monopoly that can be easily abused.

I learned the above in high-school. Of course, just like in any other profession and industry, you'll get 100 different answers because many "IT people" are simply incompetent.

Your own explanation admits that the problem of defining an operating system is that a modern OS bundles a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with an operating system.

I don't think the attitude that people are "incompetent" because they don't have the same definition as you is helpful.

My attitude is not towards normal people that aren't technically knowledgeable - they have other problems to worry about and technology is meant to make their lives easier, not harder.

But people being paid for being IT-knowledgeable have no excuse for not knowing things as basic as what an OS is. And they do exist, I've met them. Imagine being treated by medical personnel that do not know where the vital organs are or their basic function.

Very specific "Gimmie informal explanation of the otto cycle" vs incredibly wide OS request.

A better matched question for the mechanic would be wide like "explain what an engine computer does. All of them. Ever."

Or a better matched question for the IT people would be narrow like "How do mice connect to computers?" aka PS/2, USB, bluetooth, maybe inport and RS232 serial if you're of a certain age...

> #9: Computer Science courses teach you how to repair computers

Oh god, this.

edit: People also think CS teaches us which computer brands are good or answers to the questions like "This computer has 4gb ram, should I buy it"

That may be one badly chosen name. However, it is not just the name. In my language, instead of computer science it is called "informatika" (which would translate to informatics [1]), and while that name does not even suggest computers, many people have the same thoughts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field)

This was a nicely written article, but missed a few pet peeves. Like how a full generation thinks the blue "e" icon is the internet, that they can close the internet by closing the browser, etc. Some of them even think Google home page is the internet itself.

And don't let me start on how people name files: sent you a Word file, have you received my Excel file?, gotta present you a PowerPoint... Hurts a little inside.

What's wrong with "sent you a Word file"? I say that all the time. It's a file I created in Word.

If it's not .doc[x], it's not a Word file. I suspect parent was griping about people who would use "Word file" for anything they can open in Word.

If it has a Word icon in Windows Explorer, then it is a Word file. You can ask ~90% computer users if you don't believe me.

>You can ask ~90% computer users if you don't believe me.

The point of the article is that there are a lot of common misconceptions made by average people.

Also, there is no magic filetype detection that makes the Word icon appear, just a setting which is pretty easy for a novice to bodge-up, incidentally.

If you were being sarcastic, I just missed it.

I meet you at the mall. I ask you how you got here. You say:

A) I drove here.

B) I drove here in my car.

C) I drove here in my Hyundai Accent.

If you say C (or even B) people will look at you funny because you've given them too much information. Why can't people say, "I sent you the spreadsheet" or, "I'm going to show you my presentation", or "Here is the text document"? Why when it comes to computers do otherwise smart people suddenly start spouting gibberish?

Word file is both more specific and shorter than text document.

Your analogy is horrible because one way to drive implies only one kind of file. Try "I drove here." "I took a bus here." "I took a taxi here.". And if they have multiple cars it's especially reasonable to say which one they took.

I really don't understand why you have this complaint. Do you have some kind of weird overattachment to genetic terms?

Bad habit, I agree, but probably due to certain companies' very-effective marketing. For example, in some areas of the country, people used to commonly refer to carbonated beverages as "Coke".

In some areas of the country, people still commonly refer to carbonated beverages as "Coke".

Let me google that for you. We are just as guilty.

"I sent you a file".

Okay, which one? Can you be more specific? I have four files that you sent. Saying "I sent you a Word file" isn't too much information, it's just the right amount of information.

As for saying the brand name, text documents vary far and wide. I wouldn't ask someone to open a docx in Wordpad or Notepad, it'd either be horrible formatting or useless noise. Even opening a docx in OpenOffice could turn out poorly, depending on which features of Word you used in the creation of the document.

If someone was asking if they could ride with me, it makes a big difference if I drove here in my Hyundai Accent or if I rode here on my Schwinn.

The format of a document is relevant to the recipient. Not every text editor will open a Word document.

Also, you probably wouldn't look at someone funny for requesting a kleenex. All the things you mentioned have pretty strong brand-name recognition, such that e.g. even non-PowerPoint slide decks are called PowerPoints.

I totally agree with you on the "e" icon.

My parents had received a virus that originated from a web site (seedy in nature) that exploited a vulnerability in IE 6. After having to revisit them twice in a month, I replaced the shortcut with Firefox and Adblock+ (adblock was to prevent explotation of vulnerabilities in Flash Player that were happening with increasing frequency from popular ad networks).

It wasn't until last year that I flipped the icon back to Firefox when I installed their new computer. The first week I received two phone calls from my mom asking "Where's the Internet"? The second one concluded with her asking me to put the other picture back "next time I come over" because she liked it better than the red/orange icon.

Actually, the "zoom and enhance" thing isn't necessarily quite as wrong as he suggests.[1]

True, this doesn't exactly generate new information, but it generates new pseudo-information that can look awfully convincing, and in many cases is actually correct. See HN discussion here:[2]

Finally, the author omits the number one silly thing that people (well, people in Hollywood at least) believe about computers: that they go "beep beep beep" with every bloody keystroke. I swear I want to hurl things at the screen every time I see that....

1: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266

I'm split on this article. On the one hand, I empathize with the author. It can be very frustrating dealing with non-technical friends/family who use computers all the time and are seemingly incapable of doing the most basic things. Especially googling their problems.

On the other hand, there are plenty of things that I do or benefit from about which I have no knowledge. I drive to work 5 days a week. I hate it. I don't even have a long commute, typically it takes under 10 minutes. But I treat it as a necessary evil and I have very little knowledge of my car. It's a tool that I use every day, but I'm sure there are many more than 12 misconceptions I have about it.

Put another way, I wonder if grilling enthusiasts write articles titled "Things People Believe About Grills" targeted at folks like the author.

But the difference is that you don't drive your car for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, years on end.

Fair enough. I guess I'm just wary of articles like these because I think that nerds like me(and I'm assuming the author) have the tendency to put computers on this pedestal because we use them a lot and really really like them.

It's not the end of the world when someone confuses memory with storage or thinks that www should go in front of everything. In fact, these days I'd argue that it's not hugely important for "normal" people to know either of those things. I'd say that the most important part of this article is about learning to use Google, which is a hugely important skill at this point. Misconceptions about viruses are annoying and sometimes very problematic. And backups are important.

But I'd argue that just about everything else listed isn't hugely important. They're annoying misconceptions, sure. But that's about it. It's ok to be an unsophisticated user. Understanding that is what allows us to write good, usable software for "normal" people.

This argument comes up in every conversation about non-computer people, and I don't buy it. I don't know anything about how my car works, and I wouldn't be able to get a Formula 1 car out of the driveway, but I do know how to use it for ordinary tasks. Moreover, if my lack of knowledge got in the way of my everyday life, I would learn something and use that knowledge.

The car equivalent of the sort of people the author is complaining about isn't you and me, it's someone who doesn't know where the steering wheel is and refuses to learn because all they need to know is gas pedal -> go forward, and the car should figure it out from there and/or is a Magical Voodoo Machine that they can't touch.

In short: complete and willful ineptitude vs. mastery is a false dichotomy.

Maybe not that bad, but certainly someone that calls in for help every time they need the parking brake. On the same car, for years.

But many of the things the author lists are not as basic as using a steering wheel.

Why in the world would an average user need to care about when "www" should be in a url? Or even need to know when the term "download" is appropriate?

Yeah, if you work with word and double-space things a lot you should know how to do that. But I haven't encountered many people who don't know how to double space. And yeah, at this point people should know how to google things. That's a little more problematic, but I rarely run into people who don't know how to use google at this point either.

Some things on the list are important. A lot of things on the list are things that are minor annoyances that are likely similar to what my mechanic experiences when I try to describe my problem to him.

Or even need to know when the term "download" is appropriate?

If you use a word, shouldn't you know if it's appropriate?

> I wonder if grilling enthusiasts write articles titled "Things People Believe About Grills" targeted at folks like the author.

Oh boy, you wouldn't believe how serious some BBQ-ers can be. Back in college, an alumn loaned us (the Uni IEEE chapter) a very nice trailer-mounted smoker / grill setup, the kind used for serious business BBQ competitions. The owner was a great guy who had a great sense of humor, and told us all to have a good time. We didn't have a lot of money, so we bought only the necessities, you know, a dozen kegs of beer, condiments, ice, 47000 plastic cups, those cheap flimsy pre-stamped hamburger patties, hot dogs, and importantly, lighter fluid. So here we are, late on Friday night before the event (annual Uni traditional festival for no good reason), having a good time with our too-loud music, and typical responsible college student amounts of drinking. We've got a good crowd in our area. To keep the crowd enthralled, someone is shooting lighter fluid directly into the grill sending flames into the air. It was very popular with the crowd. Shortly after the flame stunt began, in rushes a troop of middle-aged BBQ dweebs with a fire extinguisher. Who immediately set about lecturing our "cooks" on how "real BBQ-ers" don't use lighter fluid because it "colors the flavor of the meat", or some such crap. We quickly confessed our thoughts that it was a likely a fruitless and unnecessary task to attempt to turn the discount-club paper-thin patties into anything resembling fine cuisine. They were unimpressed and after some more BBQ snobbery from them, and some appropriately disrespectful words from us, they retreated.

Actually, I find that ironically the cars is probably the most readily understood complex machine out there - at least here in US. Most people have very good grasp on the basic principles, usage and surprisingly in-depth knowledge of the internal workings of the vehicle. For example you can say something like "I'm having issues with my transmission" and most people (including those who don't drive or own cars) will have a pretty good idea of what you are talking about, what the symptoms are like and even where you can go to get it repaired and how long it may take and how much money it may cost.

The simple fact that we frequently use car analogy to explain complex computer concepts just helps to reinforce this notion.

Hollywood hacking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ Hollywood enhancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Readability cache, with images, good formatting, and images intact: http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo

Literally writing a book right now where I try and slay some of these. Thanks for reminding me of a few.

This reminds me of when I was describing to my wife how the NSA was snooping on the internet traffic, and she had a "special" moment: "But how can they get the data if its floating in space". Talk about cloud computing!!!

51% of people think stormy weather affects cloud computing, and a full 95% of people don't think they ever use cloud computing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-a...

who even answers these questions? have you ever had the patience to stay on the phone and be interviewed about computer use?

I rest my case.

(oh, I should mention, I loved reading and will love quoting that stat, regardless)

They were answered by people who did an online survery who responded to an email invitation. It was right in the article.

Terminally Incoherent is a great name for a website.

Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

There's some irony in an article about how normal people don't know how to use their computers getting taken down by a front page HN appearance.

Where is the irony?

If caching was set up on the webserver I might be able to read the article.

Well, OP did have WP-Cache installed once; not sure if he reinstalled it after the migration.

WP-Cache was in place, but HN hammered the server anyway. Typically it is not an issue but "dat traffic spike" was more or less way too much for the poor linode to handle:

http://i.imgur.com/3jPD0iB.png

I think Wordpress + Apache is just a beast - I've seen people talk about running Ngnx in front of Apache as a proxy serving only static content but I haven't gotten around to investigating that kind of setup yet.

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