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Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Duh. They use phones mostly. A lot of the gen z people I know are just as bad as boomers with tech. Millennials and gen x had that sweet spot of "actually having to learn how shit works not just iphone go brrr."
Yeah I don't know why the article mentions Gen Z's "tech-savvy reputation". Being able to operate a cell phone doesn't make you tech savvy.
Gen X and Millennials grew up using command line and troubleshooting computer problems before the Internet. Their tech skills are way higher than Gen Z.
I never needed to use command line, but I did hone my typing skills on MIRC and ICQ.
*Mavis Beacon.
Anyone responsible for the family IT services had to learn cmd.
Also, the article reminds me of this
I'm thankful my father was so insistent on teaching me to type properly. At the time I was super annoyed at him putting a cardboard cutout over the keyboard so I couldn't see keys. But touch typing has been a boon ever since, I doubt dad was prepping me for typing quickly mid-game but it sure is nice!
My dad was similar. Guess thats a good thing looking back. I'm going to teach my kid pivot tables so they can rule the world.
Pretty sure booting into DOS before loading Windows and playing the Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe both count as command line experience.
I also think that as smug as a lot people feel about this, it doesn't seem far off to think that physical keyboard typing skills could be substituted with newer technologies, or refined versions of existing tech. At least in terms of performing most office job functions.
I'm not saying it'll be more efficient, or better, just that it wouldn't be a surprising next step given the trends being discussed here.
If that happens, I have no doubt that smugness will turn into self-righteous indignation and a stubborn refusal to abandon the tactile keyboard for older generations, myself included.
I just hope that if that transition occurs during my lifetime, it's an either-or situation, and not a replacement of the keyboard.
Key chording has always been faster than conventional single letter typing, and that tech has been around for a long time now in the form of stenography machines. Yet most people learn on a conventional keyboard because it's simpler and more ubiquitous. This is true even now that chording has been adapted to programming and similar tasks.
You have to remember we live in a world where most people don't even know how to write properly, even those who do it as part of their job like doctors. If you draw letters by moving your fingers, you're doing it wrong by the way. The actual proper technique involves using your shoulder, elbow, and wrist to do most of the work. We've known about this for centuries, and these techniques were designed with dip pens, quils, brush, and fountain pens in mind. The cheap ballpoint pen along with rather bad instructions from teachers has led to proper handwriting technique being forgotten, and causes problems like RSI in people who handwrite regularly.
Oh ball point pens. Last I heard one of the thing they do preserve in primary school over here is the good ole progression from pencil to fountain pen and sticking for that for the whole four years. Pencil because if you use too much force you break the thing without breaking it, it's just annoying, and that's the point, once they switch to fountain pens they're not going to bend them. Also, cursive from the start. There's important lessons about connecting up letters in there: Writing single letters properly is harder than cursive because on top of moving your pen over the paper, you have to lift it. Much easier if you already have proper on-paper movement down.
I am quite partial to ink rollers nowadays but still can't stand ordinary ball points. They feel wrong.
I too think ball point pens are horrible. Fountain pens are not that expensive, last a lot longer as they are refillable, and just write better. There are some rather bad fountain pens out there though lol. Platinum Preppy is pretty much the gold standard for cheap pens under £10 or $10. Platinum plasir is a little more expensive but has a more durable body and cap made of metal using the same nib and feed as the preppy. You can also get disposable fountain pens now that aren't half bad.
Liquid ink roller balls are a good product too and are a nice middle ground between ball point and fountain pen. Although to be fair I wouldn't be against a return to good old fashioned dip pens as these are the best for calligraphy and honestly look cool as heck in my opinion.
Forcing children to do cursive was not really the point I am trying to make. Yes it's technically more efficient to write that way, but it's also considerably more complicated. Forcing children with disabilities to do it leads to all kinds of problems, and makes their writing less legible. I am more talking about techniques that avoid issues like RSI. If we are making children do things we should be teaching them the correct way to do it, not half assing it. While I think we should still teach cursive, I don't think it should be mandatory. In fact I actually want to see more keyboard use with proper ten finger technique, as that is useful for the real world. Typing technique is also something schools love to neglect. It's also better to give kids that option as even with better handwriting instruction some just do not have the required motor skills through no fault of their own. People like me were forced to do handwriting practice despite having significant coordination issues, and never being taught the right technique. Eventually I had to dig through obscure corners of the Internet to find out the right way. Situations like that should never be allowed to continue for as long as it did in my case. Either by actually teaching the right technique in the first place, or in cases where that doesn't work by switching to typing instead.
Anyone else play Montezuma’s Revenge or that DOS King Kong game throwing explosive bananas after inputting stuff for height, angle, force?
You mean that inferior version of Scorched Earth?
Scorched Earth is the mother of all games. Therefore, all games are inferior to Scorched Earth.
I remember taking that game home from school with a floppy disk to put on the home pc.
You copied that floppy?!?!
Lol. I just went googling and it was Qbasic Gorrilas! Now that takes me back.
I learned mine playing a MUD
You typed fast or you died.
For me it was WoW back when it was more social and you had to communicate via text mid fights and whatnot
Definitely RuneScape that did it for me
What about cl_gibcount 1000 in half life.
The average user experience has abstracted away understanding how things actually work.
Software is still jank. Well maybe except zfs and sqlite, but the rest is jank. Also seL4.
This is why I feel disconnected from most of my gen z people
it does, to a boomer
Yep. And phone typing is the 'hunt and peck' method of keyboard typing. Which is unfortunate because it's ingraining the slowest way to type onto a whole generation.
Autocorrect begs to differ, usually only when the word is out of my field of vision.
I took typing, on typewriters, but got efficient years later on IRC and ICQ. 60+more wpm. I'm still fairly proficient on a familiar KB too.
any good IRC servers left or did it all move to discord? Ive been meaning to get on an IRC server thats not just a mirror of the in-game chat of the game I play.
Gen Z here, most of my online life is on IRC. Learned about its existence a couple years ago. It is very much alive, although most people left there are at least semi-technical, and I miss the non-technical crowd.
Slashnet still exists and it's fairly active depending on the channel. #xkcd was bumping last time I checked my client.
I don't know, it was a very long time ago. Maybe do a search, based on your interests?
Libera is quite active
Tried using swipe typing before and honestly I'm just faster typing normally.
Yeah, autocorrect is bad enough without the extra emphasis on it with swipe.
It's vastly better when you need to type with one hand
It works well for casual conversation. But if you're trying to have a technical conversation it will fail on uncommon or custom words or phrases.
Can confirm, it’s worth the effort.
Yeah, I'm a swiper myself and I can't imagine anyone being able to swipe without knowing the keyboard layout like one would for typing.
A swiping motion and muscle memory for tapping are two different things. It took a while to get fast with my thumbs even though I type fairly fast on a keyboard.
There's a mode where you swipe your finger over each letter in order and it auto completes the word. Not sure how often younger people use it (though I wasn't aware you could do that until I saw someone younger doing it).
Sounds like predictive T9 but slower
No it’s actually way faster. You can swipe whole words in less than a second. It’s like writing with pen and paper but each letter is actually a whole word.
Agreed, it's pretty great. And while the computer sometimes misunderstands what you swipe, it will show you potential alternatives you can tap on. Like in this screenshot:
T9 was supreme.
They also stopped teaching typing in schools. My younger family members never had an computer class or a typing class.
Anything beyond ~2002 became worse than the predecessor in IT related tasks.
One difference is that the touch-screen typists rely heavily on autocorrect. I don't think they're actually as accurate as you think - their spelling and typo errors are being covered up more than yours on the desktop computer.