

Toward a Grand Unified Theory of n00bs - dangrover
http://dangrover.com/?action=view&url=toward-a-grand-unified-theory-of-n00bs

======
aspiringhacker
"I think I can speak for most of my generation in saying that computer classes
in high schools, colleges, and community centers are universally worthless.
Courses for young people are usually taught by out-of-touch adults with a much
less advanced understanding of the things they're teaching than their
students. The only kind of teacher likely to be more incompetent than a
computer teacher is a gym teacher. But that's not the problem."

Our computer classes were actually given by our gym teacher...

~~~
rwhitman
When I was in middle school we had these awful typing classes. What I would do
is copy paste lines of 0's and 1's to make a page of "binary code" then I'd
print a few copies from a random printer in the room. The teacher would see
it, think the printer was malfunctioning and turn it off. I'd do this
throughout the class until every printer was switched off. Because printing
the page of what we typed was part of the lesson once all the printers
'stopped working', the lesson was over and the only thing we could do was sit
around and play Stunt Copter until the end of class.

~~~
swernli
In our typing class, the teacher would give us each a floppy that stored our
progress, averages, and what typing tests we were working on. I got tired of
doing the tests (I was practicing typing at home on my own), and I wanted to
streamline the process. So I looked on the floppy, and found that while the
file with your progress and average scores was stored in some kind of program
specific encoding, the files that contained the typing tests chosen by the
teacher for that day were text files. So before each test, I would quickly
open the file in notepad and change the text to be just the letter "j" and
nothing else. The program would start timing you when you typed the first
letter and stop timing when you reached the last letter, so as soon as I hit
"j" it would instantly register 120 words per minute, since that was the
fastest it could measure.

Needless to say, the teacher was curious as to why I started getting 120 wpm
on every test, so when she asked me I figure I'd just tell her the truth, and
explained how I editted the file. She thought it was funny and creative, and
(after I demonstrated that I really was learning how to type anyway) just gave
me an A in the class.

------
stcredzero
_The real problem is that these courses often teach a specific operating
system or a specific office suite in an extremely facile manner. They're
glorified typing courses. That means when Microsoft changes the locations of
buttons in Word, students' knowledge is obsolete. Even programming courses in
high school (and many colleges) are tied to specific programming languages,
not general concepts. A good course teaches a mix of theory and application,
but most computer courses can't even handle application right._

This bothers me a lot. Not only are lots of "computer literacy" courses
teaching stuff that will one day be _trivia_ , but lots of supposed Computer
Science education is over involved with particular programming language
trivia. Heck, a lot of hiring nowadays is over-involved with such trivia.

Contrast this with stuff that kids do with eToys in Squeak. Kids using an
"Object-paint" program to simultaneously explore vector algebra, programming,
and robotics, without the words "vector" and "robots" even needing to be
mentioned.

Get the _mechanics_ out of the way so our minds can get on with the
_essentials_.

~~~
lurkinggrue
In the 80s I learned more from pirating software on a Commodore 64 than I did
in computer classes in school. I got the skill of figuring out a piece of
software with no help or documentation.

The computer equivalent of "teaching a man to fish" I suppose. Shame schools
don't teach exploration and play with computers.

~~~
stcredzero
Yah, mon! Leaving a curious 11 year old alone with an Apple II and some
manuals is worth a hundred "facile" computer courses.

 _Shame schools don't teach exploration and play with computers._

Squeak eToys were all about that!

~~~
C3MDigital
That's what happened to me when I was 11. My dad brought home an apple IIe and
some manuals. I saved my allowance and bought a 300 baud zoom modem and 4
years later "The Authorities" came banging on the door at 3 a.m and
confiscated my precious Apple and all my notes.

Moral of the story: I'm now a professional member of the I.T. Industry

------
rwhitman
The title belies the fact this article is actually a really excellent lesson
on the psychology of user behavior

~~~
waterlesscloud
Yes, the best thinking yet on the RWW "Facebook login" sort of thing.

------
RyanMcGreal
This whole business smacks of survivorship bias.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

What we aren't seeing is the number of Facebook users who either a) don't use
Google to find Facebook every time they log in or b) do use Google but figured
out right away that RRW is not Facebook.

~~~
Groxx
The problem with such epic n00bs, though, is that there are _so many of them_
that the "survivors" alone can destabilize your business.

Heck, without noobs, would we even have spam? _Somebody_ is paying those
people to make it worthwhile. The tiny fraction of the world that encourages
spammers cost everyone else _massive_ amounts of time and energy and money
accounting for or fixing their errors.

------
donaq
This is quite excellent. The first concretely constructive post about the
facebook login meme.

~~~
stcredzero
When I lived in Ohio, my best friend at the time was a regular weekly
commentator on a local public radio station. She was pretty sharp in a lot of
ways, but computers still confused her. She wrote a lot and used Microsoft
Word a lot, but she was never ever clear on what the Hard Drive was in her
computer. And why should she be? Her life was busy enough with her job, her
hobbies, and her family. So long as her writing was there for her when she sat
down to write again, that's really all she wanted and needed.

Users shouldn't need to care what a Hard Drive is. Their lives are not
necessarily enriched if they know about the structure of a URL. That's as much
an arbitrary, throwaway bit of knowledge as knowing the exact sequence of
menus/commands needed to turn on endnotes in Word 2003.

Those who enable users or unburden their minds will make money.

(In retrospect, I should've done things to make the thing _visible_. I
should've taken the thing apart and _showed_ her the hard drive, the RAM. Then
my "File Cabinet/Desk" metaphor might've had something concrete for her to
latch onto. As it was, she was smart enough to figure out all those Windows
icons were just convenient fictions.)

~~~
tdoggette
>Their lives are not necessarily enriched if they know about the structure of
a URL. That's as much an arbitrary, throwaway bit of knowledge as knowing the
exact sequence of menus/commands needed to turn on endnotes in Word 2003.

That's absurd. Knowing URL structure (or enough about it to figure out what
site you're on) is something that is necessary to use the internet. Phishing
scams are the obvious reason, but also for things like this where that little
bit of knowledge make the difference between success and failure.

~~~
stcredzero
Not absurd at all. There are _countless_ community colleges that have courses
that cover _both_ URL structure and such sequences of menus/commands in Word.
But is it any kind of _deep_ knowledge?

Since so many people use both web browsers and Microsoft Word, such knowledge
could even help you to get a job. But is it any kind of deep or essential
knowledge? Does anyone care about the structure of addresses for VideoTex?
Does anyone care about the layout of menus and screens in the old AOL client?
How about setting up privacy settings in Friendster? Yes, a few people still
care, but almost everyone will recognize that this is all really just trivia
now. But once upon a time, this was _really useful information_.

Yes, URL structure is currently necessary to use the internet as we know it
today. But it's every bit as arbitrary as the width of the standard rail
gauge.

Math is deep knowledge. Physics or chemistry is deep knowledge. URL structure
is trivia. A lot of people who don't pay attention to it are actually _smart
enough_ to recognize it as such. They have other things to think about.

~~~
jff
So because the technology may change at some point in the future, there's no
reason to learn it now? Nobody should have bothered learning how to use a
fountain pen, because they should have known ballpoints would be around
eventually?

If you want to use the Internet, you should at least know a little bit about
how information is addressed. Would you consider it acceptable to spend a
couple hours in the library every day but still not know what the Dewey
Decimal System is? This facebook login thing is like you went to the library
every day for the same book, but instead of learning its location in the
shelf, you ask the librarian and blindly grab the book he points at--in this
case, he pointed to the book next to yours. Hey, this book used to be about
Tom Sawyer--why did they change it to be about a jumping frog?

~~~
stcredzero
_Nobody should have bothered learning how to use a fountain pen, because they
should have known ballpoints would be around eventually?_

Notice that nobody cares about nib maintenance anymore, and that ballpoints
made fortunes before they became commoditized. Those fortunes were made by
innovators who could tell the essentials from trivia and mechanics.

 _Would you consider it acceptable to spend a couple hours in the library
every day but still not know what the Dewey Decimal System is?_

Since we have computerized indexing, one could just go to serial numbers and
not lose a bit of functionality. Physical browsing would lose out, but that's
hardly a loss of essential function. Cover Flow shows how this could be
replaced and enhanced. Lots of librarians are actually wrestling with such
implications. Just one example:

[http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2009/03/if-every-
book-...](http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2009/03/if-every-book-has-
reader.html)

There was also a Google tech talk about this.

 _This facebook login thing is like you went to the library every day for the
same book, but instead of learning its location in the shelf, you ask the
librarian and blindly grab the book he points at_

Your analogy falls down. URLs are much farther from everyday reality than
objects like books. The level of abstraction is different, which is the
essential point.

~~~
donaq
_URLs are much farther from everyday reality than objects like books_

I should point out that the reverse is true for many people these days, and
will be true for many more in the future. The digital revolution is creating a
new reality, methinks, and it behooves a citizen of the times to learn how to
get around in both. :)

~~~
stcredzero
_The digital revolution is creating a new reality, methinks, and it behooves a
citizen of the times to learn how to get around in both. :)_

This is like touting the immense possibilities of a brave new, literate world,
but then emphasizing one should brush up on their wet tablet cuneiform skills.

The first part hits the essence of the revolution. The second part is mired in
implementation triviality.

~~~
donaq
Except that a whole lot of other ubiquitous technologies are built upon that
implementation triviality, which makes it no longer trivial.

------
by
Much as I'm in favour of people understanding the structure of URLs, the
article is wrong suggest this is the best way to prevent bank phishing. The
correct advice is to bookmark your bank login URL, if your bank is competent
this should be an https address, and always reach your login page using this
bookmark. Never click a link in an email to login to your bank, it requires a
great deal of effort and skill to check an emailed URL is valid.

~~~
patio11
And your bank makes it hard for you! Chase Bank sent me a (legitimate!) email
this week saying "We've just intercepted a suspicious transaction and tried
reaching you by phone but we couldn't. Please click here if you authorized it
or click here if you didn't." And then the link threw up a security
certificate error! If they hadn't had my name, four digits of my account
number, and a number exactly matching the number Google had just emailed me to
say "We tried charging you $523.25 for your AdWords account but it got denied
by your bank" 2 hours earlier, I would have sworn it was the world's best
phishing attempt.

~~~
byrneseyeview
It gets worse:

<http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/08/21/chase-insecure>

Chase sent me this, too. If you visit the site in Chrome, it tells you it's a
suspected phishing site.

~~~
jerf
You should submit that as a top-level HN story.

------
Groxx
Nice article, and I think it does a decent job explaining the point and the
problems. I, personally, side with the education-solution, as excessive
computer ignorance is a very real danger and _much_ more applicable to most
people than most things school attempts to teach.

In all seriousness, this seems like the perfect place to use the StupidFilter
(<http://stupidfilter.org>). Separate bugs and complaints as they did (bug-
tracking system instead of emails), and run all complaints through the filter.
I'd even recommend informing people that it'll be run through the filter;
anyone who can read before they scream at you can test for themselves to make
sure it passes. If they can't be understandable and can't read before yelling,
they're not worth the time, because nothing you do will make all of them
happy. As the article suggests, pick your battles.

------
GaggleofGirls
People want tools to solve problems, really to address their pains in life.
These can include being bored and wanting to have some fun (hence Farmville),
keeping in contact with people, managing their money, doing heir work, etc.

Most people are motivated enough to learn what they need to to address their
pains and very little beyond that, partially because there is so much vying
for our time and attention.

I know computers, but I don't know cars yet I drive because it addresses many
of my needs. I know mostly as much about a car as I need to. Learning more
about it does not satisfy other needs of mine (I don't find them interesting,
so they don't satisfy my curiosity needs). I would sound as stupid answering
car questions as the NYC people on the street did answering Browser questions.

So, do I need to learn more about cars or do computers need to work right for
people who don't understand them?

------
monkeygrinder
We get traffic for 'Facebook down', 'Facebook login' and, my favourite,
'Google search'. "lalala, I'm going to Google and searching for Google search
and then clicking on an unrelated link."

This is a fantastic post, esp if you're like me - a geek that studied
philosophy.

------
frederickcook
I think the best part of this article is the discussion of the ability to
learn new abstractions. When I decide I want to file a patent, I go and learn
about the patent system. Same with the Unix command line, the bus system in a
foreign country, or how to go to a gym for free when traveling (most will let
'prospective members' workout once free).

My sister on the other hand probably hasn't learned a new abstraction since
down-dog in yoga, and struggles with the fact that if she doesn't file a tax
return, she faces huge fines. I still love her to death, and will endlessly
redesign my website until it is intuitive for her.

------
elblanco
Thanks for this, I've printed it out and stuck it on our product manager's
monitor.

------
_delirium
A section about the trouble hierarchical information layout causes, in an
article posted on (and written about) the web, is interesting, since some of
the early motivations for hypertext were precisely the feeling that
hierarchical structures and navigation were unintuitive and limiting, and that
instead links between relevant stuff should be the main abstraction. Ted
Nelson in particular seems to see eliminating hierarchies in computation as
sort of a holy war.

------
cookiecaper
The thing is that most people don't even try. This is partially our fault;
people are just expected to grab a computer and automatically understand
things, and as a group software developers really should start things off with
an introduction.

However, in my experience, most people are not willing to learn about their
computers if you give them the chance. They're entirely apathetic about the
whole deal. They don't care about anything, they just want to get Facebook and
Farmville and be done with it. From this perspective, the iPad is _too_ open,
and should come with a pre-programmed list of allowed domains to prevent
phishing or other scams.

~~~
thwarted
What's interesting is that they're willing to take the time to figure out
Facebook and Farmville, and they seem to relish the frustration they bring on
themselves by not paying attention to the whole process, but rather just the
end result.

Just think how much time they'd save, time they could be playing Farmville, if
they used things like bookmarks, or set their home page properly (to Facebook,
perhaps), or any of the other features and tools that are actually designed to
make their experience easier, faster, and more efficient.

~~~
patio11
_they're willing to take the time to figure out Facebook and Farmville_

I'm telling you: give your computers game mechanics to learn your app.
Facebook should buy you a pig and give you a diploma if you figure out how to
log into them without Google. It would solve the problem in a week. (Test
first, obviously.)

Heck, Facebook could make a "user education tithe" of virtual goodies a
condition of being listed in their programs. Got 1M users and want more? Pony
up goodies for us to expand the platform with. It is in your long-term best
interests. It is in your short-term best interests, too, if your short-term
future would be compromised by us turning your notifications off.

------
troystribling
His proposed curriculum sounds very similar to the one used by Fairmont High
in Verner Vinge's Rainbows End <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End>.
Fairmont High was actually the current equivalent of a Trade School.

------
tom_ilsinszki
Usability testing would solve a lot of problems. I don't know how many apps
get tested with the help of real world users, but I think there is still room
for improvement.

~~~
chadgeidel
I agree, but I don't think that was the focus of this article. No amount of
usability testing would have helped here. RWW and Facebook already look
completely different - not the URL, the entire page!

The same goes for any other application. The user doesn't have an appropriate
"mental model" of how the computer works. What is an app developer to do at
that point?

------
est
There is another great piece of similar story in China: Hao123

------
mlLK
Does anyone else dismiss this phenomenon as just a generation misusing an
interactive medium? I think the "noob" label is misleading given the scope of
the problem.

------
albertcardona
"The first line of defense is to make sure that people who do have a clue can
get help with their problems easily without having to contact you. If all your
emails are from wackos with hopelessly dumb questions, that means you're doing
things right!"

I learned something: improve my documentation, videotutorials and all until
that happens.

------
rogermugs
i was going to write some rant about how we're all n00bs at something... but
then i read this.

these people genuinely are idiots.

