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Obsolete technology, apparently: file/directory structure:quote:CatherineCatherine Garland, an astrophysicist, started seeing the problem in 2017. She was teaching an engineering course, and her students were using simulation software to model turbines for jet engines. She’d laid out the assignment clearly, but student after student was calling her over for help. They were all getting the same error message: The program couldn’t find their files. tl;dr version: courtesy of being brought up using mobile phones/Dropbox/Google Drive, kids today store everything digital in huge piles instead of obsessively categorizing everything like one should. The thought of using a computer that way makes my eye twitch, but I suppose that could just be a sign of some neurodegenerative disorder brought on by old age 
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Sep 22, 2021 16:13
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I hire young engineers straight out of college and absolutely zero of the people I’ve interviewed seem like they’d be confused by file locations.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:26
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Engineers aren't people though. former engineer myself But yeah, engineers will probably be the last group to give up on that approach, esp. those that have to develop code. Everyone else... yeah, I can see it happening. If your computer or application has a halfway decent search capability, highly structured organization may not be worth the effort.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:33
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I’m a mechanical engineer and use the simulation software they’re likely teaching in that anecdote. This isn’t user friendly software in any way. If you don’t understand file locations (even after being prompted) there’s no chance you’ll get anything done in there. I really doubt this.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:38
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Chemmy posted:I hire young engineers straight out of college and absolutely zero of the people I’ve interviewed seem like they’d be confused by file locations. Lmao their credentials are faked; no true engineer would ever not be confused by something. e: There was one who spent like ½ an hour lacing their new work shoes (safety shoes required on site) and ended up with the ends on the bottom. (In hind-sight I have no idea where he found a pair of safety shoes that came unlaced. Maybe he ordered them from Ali Express who knows  )
3D Megadoodoo has a new favorite as of 16:42 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 16:38
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Do you remember Channel One News that they'd play in school? I mostly remember it for a reason other than the programming. In preparation for watching it, my teachers would leave the classroom TV on and on the proper channel so it would just start when the broadcast began. The TV would be sitting there with a black screen, no sound playing, looking off for all intents and purposes. However, my young ears could hear the high pitched dog-whistle screech of the CRT that was on with the volume turned up without playing anything. It gave me splitting headaches. But of course none of my teachers with their old, busted ears could hear it, so they just gaslighted or mocked me and didn't give a poo poo.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:49
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Trabant posted:Obsolete technology, apparently: file/directory structure: This definitely reads like the "kids eating tide pods" of computer use. Like, I don't doubt it may have happened a couple of times, but I fundimentally doubt that anyone with enough computer experience to be taking an engineering course would regularly make a mistake like that. Then again, I did run into a kid who, when trying to write fizzbuzz, wrote "if x is even" as code and became very confused when it didn't work, so maybe I'm the idiot.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:58
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an actual frog posted:Agree, H&CF is a great watch. This is neat, I've worked with a bunch of Tyler helicopter mount stuff over the years, and probably even this very assist monitor. The Middle and Major camera systems, used in the video he shows (can't tell exactly which one but the only difference is in the weight it carries), are really cool examples of engineering and let you throw around 100lbs of weight as easily as a phone camera. It's basically a small camera crane that gets mounted inside the helicopter, the operator sits inside at, at the camera end, and you just control the camera as if it was on your shoulder while the rig handles the weight for you. The camera only sticks out of the chopper a little bit, making it relatively safe for the operator. Also Video 8 was an absolute staple in the film industry. I still have an old Sony GV clamshell recorder with built-in TFT monitor lying around somewhere, though I'm not sure it still works. It was a super compact little thing that you could easily mount anywhere. I'm sure I still have boxes full of old video assist footage that I recorded with it, I should probably get that into proper storage or digitize it at some point.
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Sep 22, 2021 17:44
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Chemmy posted:I hire young engineers straight out of college and absolutely zero of the people I’ve interviewed seem like they’d be confused by file locations. Conversely, I teach college students how to code, and dealing with file structures is a very real hurdle. The bane of my existence is how Windows handles .zip files. Double-click, and it opens like a folder. Things inside will just open up. But try to save them? Of course not, silly! They're in a .zip file! Now you're thinking, "just extract the files!" But that's because you've grown up as a computer toucher and figured that out already. Tech savvy means something different to younger generations, and they didn't grow up with Stuffit Expander and poo poo.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:12
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The default Windows behavior of concealing file extensions within Explorer fucks with my job every single working day of my life. My job is basically massaging monthly reports into a web-based portal, and for some god-forsaken reason the developer of this portal decided to make it require attachments be in the text (tab-delimited) format, but with the file extension .xls. I don't know who made this decision or why, but on an hourly basis I wish that the fleas of a thousand camels would invade their armpits.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:25
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Imagined posted:The default Windows behavior of concealing file extensions within Explorer fucks with my job every single working day of my life.  Yep. Try explaining to a student that the file named 'Dog' is actually 'Dog.JPG' and not 'Dog.jpg' or if you actually name it 'Dog.jpg' now your file is actually 'Dog.jpg.JPG'
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Sep 22, 2021 18:35
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Trabant posted:But yeah, engineers will probably be the last group to give up on that approach, esp. those that have to develop code. Everyone else... yeah, I can see it happening. If your computer or application has a halfway decent search capability, highly structured organization may not be worth the effort. Engineer here and I would like to have my BeOS file system back.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:40
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lord funk posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmaUIyvy8E8
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Sep 22, 2021 18:44
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lord funk posted:Conversely, I teach college students how to code, and dealing with file structures is a very real hurdle. The bane of my existence is how Windows handles .zip files. Double-click, and it opens like a folder. Things inside will just open up. But try to save them? Of course not, silly! They're in a .zip file! I know how file systems work and the way windows handles zips is obnoxious and not an indicator that a user doesn’t know how file structures work.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:44
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Imagined posted:My job is basically massaging monthly reports into a web-based portal You should get a different job. That sounds like hell.
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Sep 22, 2021 18:55
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Fantastic Foreskin posted:You should get a different job. That sounds like hell. I know 
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Sep 22, 2021 19:11
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Would this be a good time to complain about windows 7-10? Features called "programs" or "my applications" used to be a convenient place to find my "programs" or "applications." Then if I try to search my PC for them, windows serves me... web results. Thanks. Then I found where a game was installed to change some things, and I couldn't do much because I simply couldn't navigate there. AppData was a hidden folder, and that's where my games were installing? I don't remember how I unhid that and the subfolders, but it certainly was not the normal way of doing it. I think that folder's hidden again now, too. And generally, if you want to change the way windows interacts with you or I/O devices, there are two and sometimes three interfaces that kind of live in different dimensions that might change the thing you want, and one might be a different skin for the same thing or maybe not. Maybe this is all me being stupid, but I feel like you couldn't blame someone having trouble. In the day, you didn't have to be a "computer person" to do all the things a typical user needs to; you just needed to look around and click on stuff while having common sense about what might be vital organs of the PC you don't want to touch without backup.
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Sep 22, 2021 19:18
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GWBBQ posted:I remember my first mp3 player. 32MB of internal storage and a Smart Media card slot. I think I had the 128MB card because Radio Shack kept the prized 256MB ones behind the counter but had no security cameras. Between the player, Limewire (no I didn't use Kazaa or post-Metallica Napster like the unwashed masses), and the tape deck adapter in my Buick Century, I was driving to school in style. I had an Eigerman MP3 player back in about 2000. It came with one song on it for some reason and it was a pain in the rear end to delete. It fit maybe a dozen songs. It cost one trillion dollars. It was actually pretty slick, it was just kind of useless. Then there was Rio. That was also useless. The Creative HDD based one was pretty cool. It was just huge and sucked batteries. I really didn't use MP3 players until the 2nd generation iPod. I still have mine. It won't really hold a charge anymore, but it still works. Also, it's full of music in Mac format that I can't get off it so I kind of have to keep it around. One day I'll figure out a way to transfer it.
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Sep 22, 2021 19:49
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I enjoy how, in Windows 10, they give you an Uninstall option when you right-click on a Start Menu shortcut. Actually clicking 'uninstall' there, though, just opens up the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel widget and takes you to the top of a list of every single program currently installed on your PC.
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Sep 22, 2021 19:50
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Neito posted:
As someone inexperienced with Python: isn't that valid Python? I would believe you if you told me "Yeah, sure, of course that's exactly what you write in Python, but the kid's assignment was in C."
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Sep 22, 2021 20:29
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....no. maybe vba.
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Sep 22, 2021 20:40
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Chemmy posted:I know how file systems work and the way windows handles zips is obnoxious and not an indicator that a user doesn’t know how file structures work. Yep, they're two different things. In practice they are the point where I can sort the students into a) does know how file systems work and b) will click on anything that matches the name of the thing they're looking for. For students specifically, it's worth remembering that they all have different backgrounds with computers. I teach art students. Lots of them did not grow up glued to a monitor and message boards. So my class is literally the first time they have extracted a .zip file, or had to organize their project files in the file system.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:14
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Imagined posted:I enjoy how, in Windows 10, they give you an Uninstall option when you right-click on a Start Menu shortcut. Actually clicking 'uninstall' there, though, just opens up the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel widget and takes you to the top of a list of every single program currently installed on your PC. The right click uninstall does work directly for some things. Maybe just for UWP apps or stuff from the MS store or something? I know I got rid of some of the crap that came preinstalled that way, at least.
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Sep 22, 2021 22:17
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Imagined posted:Do you remember Channel One News that they'd play in school? I mostly remember it for a reason other than the programming. In preparation for watching it, my teachers would leave the classroom TV on and on the proper channel so it would just start when the broadcast began. The TV would be sitting there with a black screen, no sound playing, looking off for all intents and purposes. However, my young ears could hear the high pitched dog-whistle screech of the CRT that was on with the volume turned up without playing anything. It gave me splitting headaches. But of course none of my teachers with their old, busted ears could hear it, so they just gaslighted or mocked me and didn't give a poo poo. 100% agree to all this but I think our TVs has a remote turn on thing going. What a giant waste of 15 minutes a day that was. Giant excuse to feed a commercial for acne cream to a captive audience.
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Sep 23, 2021 00:29
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AlternateAccount posted:
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Sep 23, 2021 01:07
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Speaking of features not doing what you expect them to do. I really hate that when I pull up the app thing in android, there is a search bar at the top. Every once in a while, I forget, and think it's for searching for an app I have installed, because that would be really nice instead of having to scroll through all of them, but instead it's just a regular google search.
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Sep 23, 2021 03:43
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i have no idea where anything in windows is. i always end up navigating between the control panel, settings panel, and half a dozen "properties" menus if i need to adjust any piece of hardware.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:23
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I used to know where things were, back in like Windows 95/98, then they kept changing where poo poo was located each new version of Windows so now I have no clue and have to play computer archaeologist on my own home PC.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:28
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Cojawfee posted:Speaking of features not doing what you expect them to do. I really hate that when I pull up the app thing in android, there is a search bar at the top. Every once in a while, I forget, and think it's for searching for an app I have installed, because that would be really nice instead of having to scroll through all of them, but instead it's just a regular google search. The home screen and app drawer in Android are themselves just an app, and you can get different ones that look and work differently. I like one called NovaLauncher, it's free in google play and lets you customize the hell out of everything, including putting an app search bar in the app drawer. (If you try an alternate launcher and hate it, it's really easy to switch back to the default launcher, just uninstall it, or change back the "Home app" in Android settings -> Apps -> Default apps.)
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Sep 23, 2021 05:37
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well the main problem is that the options are scattered around with no real consistency. for example say i want to access the sound settings. i could go to settings > display > sound. or i could go to control panel > hardware and sounds. what if i want to adjust the volume? i could right click the sound icon on the taskbar and open volume mixer, but to access the "master" sound i have to go to settings.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:41
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Stexils posted:well the main problem is that the options are scattered around with no real consistency. for example say i want to access the sound settings. i could go to settings > display > sound. or i could go to control panel > hardware and sounds. what if i want to adjust the volume? i could right click the sound icon on the taskbar and open volume mixer, but to access the "master" sound i have to go to settings.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:42
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Imagined posted:I enjoy how, in Windows 10, they give you an Uninstall option when you right-click on a Start Menu shortcut. Actually clicking 'uninstall' there, though, just opens up the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel widget and takes you to the top of a list of every single program currently installed on your PC. I love it, because Add/Remove programs has been there since about Windows 95, and I'll accept that they can't really integrate the 25 year old technology with the current one, but they can at least give us a handy shortcut.
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Sep 23, 2021 07:39
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Mescal posted:Would this be a good time to complain about windows 7-10? Features called "programs" or "my applications" used to be a convenient place to find my "programs" or "applications." Then if I try to search my PC for them, windows serves me... web results. Thanks. Then I found where a game was installed to change some things, and I couldn't do much because I simply couldn't navigate there. AppData was a hidden folder, and that's where my games were installing? I don't remember how I unhid that and the subfolders, but it certainly was not the normal way of doing it. I think that folder's hidden again now, too. And generally, if you want to change the way windows interacts with you or I/O devices, there are two and sometimes three interfaces that kind of live in different dimensions that might change the thing you want, and one might be a different skin for the same thing or maybe not. Maybe this is all me being stupid, but I feel like you couldn't blame someone having trouble. i feel like this is obsolete tier like putting stuff in c:\docs\ or something. Installing poo poo to appdata etc lets you install stuff without having to gently caress with permissions too much and can help keep problems firewalled off from other users. When I search, at least, it tries to pull results from all local programs or files, then internet poo poo. There's also a lot of stuff that's in c:\Users\sniperworeconverse\ that sure as poo poo isn't my documents and it's been that way for quite a while. Appdata is old as gently caress. chglcu posted:The right click uninstall does work directly for some things. Maybe just for UWP apps or stuff from the MS store or something? I know I got rid of some of the crap that came preinstalled that way, at least. yeah i dunno exactly what settings or w/e to do it but it's 100% a thing that you can set up when you write a program. Kwyndig posted:I used to know where things were, back in like Windows 95/98, then they kept changing where poo poo was located each new version of Windows so now I have no clue and have to play computer archaeologist on my own home PC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY I wanna say it was sometime around windows 8 i got used to hitting the windows button and then typing out what i wanted and the OS just trying to do it's best to show me what matched. The first time I messed around with 8 i was 100% done with ye olde poo poo. I was totally onboard with sacrificing the desktop and everything. Was it 8 or 10 that really let you go hog wild slamming windows into different parts of the screen with keyboard shortcuts? Hell yeah, it should have been like that in 95 in the first place. There was a point where hardware had caught up enough with poo poo like "draw a window here" and it did it well enough that i could sit down and start belting work out fast and jumping between different applications etc
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Sep 23, 2021 08:37
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Stexils posted:i have no idea where anything in windows is. i always end up navigating between the control panel, settings panel, and half a dozen "properties" menus if i need to adjust any piece of hardware. I used to spend loads of time configuring my start menu, organising all the programs into folders and what not, after a reinstall of windows, which was quite common back then... nowadays I just search or attach them to the taskbar.
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Sep 23, 2021 11:27
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I regularly remote into, or use directly, win 98 and winXP interfaces. If you say you prefer those, you either have rose-colored glasses or terrible taste. Win 10 has faults, but it is so much better than every previous version. I skipped over 8 so that may be why I like it. Nocheez has a new favorite as of 19:45 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 19:13
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When people say they like 98 or XP they are actually thinking of Windows 2000, which was the peak of old-school Windows and the best version until 7 came along.
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Sep 23, 2021 19:34
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His Divine Shadow posted:nowadays I just search I like how we've gone back to DOS days. "Want to start a program? Just type its name here!" (Only worse than DOS because you still have to use a mouse, too.)
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Sep 23, 2021 19:35
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Cojawfee posted:Speaking of features not doing what you expect them to do. I really hate that when I pull up the app thing in android, there is a search bar at the top. Every once in a while, I forget, and think it's for searching for an app I have installed, because that would be really nice instead of having to scroll through all of them, but instead it's just a regular google search.
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Sep 23, 2021 19:40
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I like how we've gone back to DOS days. "Want to start a program? Just type its name here!" (Only worse than DOS because you still have to use a mouse, too.) In Windows 10? You just hit the ⊞ Win key and start typing? No mouse required. Got to be honest I'm looking forward to Windows 11's native ability to run Android apps. I'm not sure exactly what I'll use it for but I'm pretty sure I'll find some cool way to use it, and if for no other reason it ought to increase the availability of Android ports.
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Sep 23, 2021 19:46
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And then half of the programs you just installed then don’t show up because something changed between 7 and 10 with getting stuff in there, apparently.
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Sep 23, 2021 19:48
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