[SWLUG] Employment agencies

[Julian Hall]

Steve Hill wrote:

> Going a bit off topic here, but I used to complain and moan about 
> having to deal with the BBC's and RiscOS machines at school and what 
> good is that in teaching you how to use Windows and MacOS, as are used 
> in the real world...  However by attitude towards this has completey 
> changed because I now see the results of people coming out of schools 
> having never used anything other than Windows.

I'll agree with you up to a point there Steve.  Programming on a machine 
with 32K taught me several things, not least of which was best practise 
for organising my work, and crucially how it worked under the bonnet.  
Too many users manage to break their machines through not knowing what 
is vital and what isn't.  In that I sympathise with whatever MS tech 
came up with the idea of hiding system files by default.  Having said 
that even the professionals make mistakes.  Two examples:

1.  A lady decided to "tidy" her computer by putting all the files with 
the same extensions into their own folders.  We're not talking BMPs and 
JPGs here.. she put all her .COM, .DLL, .EXE etc files into their own 
folders.  Oddly enough the machine refused to co-operate with her after 
that.

2.  I was on employment training *cough* years ago.  The trainer was 
younger than me (I was 19) and had O Level (I had A Level) Computing.  
Teaching us about wild cards in DOS.  All the machines booted off floppy 
disk system disks.  It went like this:

copy all the *.COM files from C: to A:
Now delete all the *.COM files from A:

At this point I looked at him with a "You DO know this is a BAD idea??" 
look on my face.  He ignored me.

"OK now reboot your computers."

I waited.

"Sir, it says 'bad or missing command.com' what do I do?"

He went white and spent the afternoon recreating 28 boot floppies.

So his "qualifications" to teach me stretched to... well.. not very far 
really.  He knew more about DOS, but damn all about logic.

> I think the schools should have a mixture of Windows, Linux and MacOS 
> X boxes and have schedules that force the students to use all of them 
> - then you get them trained in a more lateral problem solving ability 
> rather than expecting everything to be "just so".

I agree there, but you know why they don't.  Microsoft's punitive 
licensing probably bars them from putting other OSs on the machines, and 
the paltry Education budgets can't stretch to having machines bought 
with no OS or custom built without the MS subsidy.

> Too many times I see people complain that they can't use a machine 
> running Fedora (with Gnome) - there's no button marked "start" and 
> working out that the red fedora button does the same thing is too 
> difficult for them. Then once you show them that they get confused 
> because the menu says "OpenOffice Writer" instead of "Microsoft Word" 
> - I mean this stuff isn't rocket science, but they've had it drilled 
> into them from day 1 that all computers are absolutely identical so 
> they don't try to solve problems when presented with something 
> slightly different, they give up instead.

In my experience in tech support for seven years I think the problem 
goes deeper.  When I (and probably a lot of the readership on this LUG) 
started in computers you had to know what you were doing.  Even to play 
a game you had to know the correct command syntax to load the game *and* 
balance the volume on the tape deck properly (hush.. I'm THAT old.. deal 
with it ;)).

Nowadays clever salesmanship and pretty icons manage to con the less 
technically adept that computers are for them.  Many times I said to a 
customer "C colon" and got the reply "What?" .. "Colon.. the two dots 
one above the other".. "Oh you mean the double dot [or dot dot.. 
interchangeable].. don't use your jargon on me.. I'm not technical".  Or 
worse "Oh you mean the one above the dot comma" *groan*, to the rest of 
the English speaking world the semi-colon.  One friend of mine has had a 
PC for three years *only* Windows and still can't get his brain around 
the Windows Explorer.

It's not age related either, before anyone says that education standards 
are slipping.  I had the "dot dot" comment from anyone between pensioner 
and school child.  They develop a mental block and cannot see that the 
same symbols they are used to writing are just being reproduced on the 
screen in front of them.  Educated professionals were the worst 
(apologies to any reading this, I'm generalising I know).  They assumed 
that because they knew a lot about their chosen subject that computers 
would be easy.  What leap of logic would tell an Olympic pole vaulter 
that running a marathon was easy?  Admittedly they tended not to give me 
the "dot dot" line, but then asked "How do I get my email?" faced with a 
flipping big "Get Mail" button in the corner of the screen.

It's down to native intelligence and logic.  My Dad will be 70 next 
year.  He started using my old laptop less than 2 weeks ago and is now 
surfing away quite happily and it's given him a whole new interest, as 
well as supporting the interests he already had.  Dad left school with 
CSE woodwork, but has inbred intelligence and logic which is what 
computers need.

As you said Steve, it's not rocket science, but that's just as well 
because the average user is not a rocket scientist.

Kind regards,

Julian