
Things People Believe About Computers - klimeryk
http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-computers/
======
jiggy2011
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.

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

~~~
techdmn
Suck squish bang blow.

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

~~~
VLM
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.

------
kunil
> #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"

~~~
lubomir
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)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_\(academic_field\))

------
pestaa
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.

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

~~~
igravious
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?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
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".

~~~
groovy2shoes
In some areas of the country, people still commonly refer to carbonated
beverages as "Coke".

------
nkoren
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](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html)

2:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266)

------
eieio
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.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
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.

~~~
eieio
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.

~~~
icebraining
_Or even need to know when the term "download" is appropriate?_

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

------
abritishguy
Hollywood hacking:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ)
Hollywood enhancing:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk)

------
whiddershins
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-
incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-
computers/&strip=1)

~~~
Slackwise
Readability cache, with images, good formatting, and images intact:
[http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo](http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo)

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

------
calgoo
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!!!

~~~
aestra
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...](http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-
affects-cloud-computing-2012-8)

~~~
whiddershins
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)

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

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enthdegree
Terminally Incoherent is a great name for a website.

------
mumbi
Cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-
incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-
computers/&strip=1)

~~~
Jgrubb
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.

~~~
hamax
Where is the irony?

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

~~~
tuxmentat
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](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.

