- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- hackernews@derp.foo
A friend shared a post from someone else that was talking about this article. I’ve quoted the text from that post below:
This is a 1996 guide on how to help someone use a computer. It’s strikingly resonant with ‘how to be a parent’, or really ‘how to help anyone with anything’. A nice example of “the universal within the particular”
It’s not relevant anymore, because instead of helping people unfamiliar with computers we now help people who think they are familiar with computers. They are going to argue with us, find hills to die on, all while not understanding a single thing of what they are talking about.
They think they know something, so they don’t do that anymore. They care about the way to reach that end they have imagined as the best.
This is obsolete because of “user-friendliness” and other modern trends making causal relationships very fuzzy even for “computer people”.
Good news is they can’t anymore. Bad news is - their voice of authority is, for example, their friend from college who can write helloworlds in Python, because that friend is social and successful and not too nerdy, so they must be smarter than me on any subject at all. Or, worse, an employee of Apple Genius Bar or someone like that.
Not anymore. No text message - no feeling that something is wrong. Customer satisfaction. Instead of “some error happens” users say “nothing happens” now.
Not anymore, now they blame you if you’ve touched their machine even once before. Themselves - maybe sometimes, and there’s only one party they won’t blame - the vendor.
They don’t want that, because they consider you weird and your skills worthless, in principle, in ideology.
God forbid they’ll guess that that’s your goal. They are normal people, see, and bad with computers, so you shouldn’t do that “helping to become more capable” thing to them. You should just help them each bloody time. That’s an /s.
I don’t adapt anymore. They always expect me to teach them to adapt. I just say it’s crap and I use, say, a native IMAP client. Or that my Facebook usage is limited to FBM. They don’t get it and think I must teach them to adapt. Cause FB, MS, Apple etc are ultimate authorities and “computer-savvy” people are just those who know how to use their stuff. That’s an /s.
They are ideologically opposed to such a thing. Cause they are normal people and shouldn’t care about this stuff.
The advice is fine in general, optimal even. Just with what I said in this butthurt tone it can only get you so far.
Who hurt you, my man?