
IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don’t Get - edw519
http://www.hackification.com/2009/09/28/ten-it-concepts-that-non-it-people-dont-get/
======
hughprime
Worthless list. All over the place, from "non-IT people don't understand that
the screen isn't the computer" (Really? How many people are still confused
about that?) to "non-IT people don't understand how to set up a network" (yep,
I have trouble with that one too).

~~~
rabidgnat
The problems mentioned are huge in the over-30, non-tech crowd. I worked IT in
college, and the skills of professors and admins older than 35 were much worse
than the average English major in a computer lab.

They viewed the machine as a Magic Box that let them type documents and browse
the web and sometimes crashed if they angered it. Some needed help getting CDs
out of the tray. Some didn't know that "check if it is plugged in" is a
troubleshooting step. Some were very superstitious about crashes ("don't move
the monitor!" was my favorite).

If you don't see anyone struggling with these concepts, well, I haven't since
I got a programming job 3 years ago. They didn't stop having problems, I just
don't see the problems anymore. Always watch out for selection bias: the set
of "people you know" isn't representative of the population at large

~~~
stakent
And that's the point of this list.

One can argue against some or all of it's points, but overall message is
unarguable.

We are _not_ our own target group. It's very difficult to look at website
using mindeset of these people.

------
mcantor
I simply have to point out how awesome it is to be on a site where the two
comments beginning with "Excellent list" and "Worthless list" are both equally
upvoted to the top of the thread list. Thank you, HN, for letting me hold on
to a sliver of faith in humanity.

~~~
pchristensen
I can't tell if this is genuine or sarcastic.

~~~
mcantor
It was completely genuine. I try to avoid sarcasm on the internet as much as
possible, unless it's stupendously obvious, simply for reasons like this.

These days, it seems like people are increasingly uncomfortable disagreeing
with each other: "I disagree" is often meant or interpreted as "You're _wrong_
, and you should never have spoken up in the first place, you foolish whelp."

That's why I was really delighted to see a pair of contradictory opinions
sharing the top of an HN comment list: it meant, cursorily, that every person
who upvoted one did not automatically downvote the other, but also that the
community as a whole values the disagreement itself. I know I'm making a
mountain out of a molehill now, but only for the purpose of explaining why I
wasn't being sarcastic.

~~~
Psyonic
And how exactly would one go about downvoting comments on this site?

~~~
daleharvey
once you get past a certain karma you can downvote comments (never articles)

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DanielStraight
_EXCELLENT_ list. One, that of having a choice in software, had never even
occurred to me before.

~~~
joe_the_user
This is a good list of many things that people _might_ not get.

But the crazy thing is that there no guarantee that a given user will or won't
any one of these things - as well as no guarantee whether they will or won't
other subtler things.

After all this, it actually makes me _less_ inclined to pander to all the
user's possible ignorances. Rather than worry every strange conception that
users might have, we should create a UI which is self-consistent, _powerful_
and hides as little as possible.

"Drag-and-drop" and "click versus double click" are two approaches which were
created to make things "intuitive" but which are a disaster because they don't
make any announcement of their presence and _don't actually increase the
number of options a user has_. Hierarchical files and hierarchical menus may
indeed not be "gotten" by some people but those people need to be educated and
once they are, they use just about any standard-conformant GUI app whereas
each time the latest visual-fu-metaphor is added to a given app, everyone will
_always_ need to parse it again.

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nanexcool
My girlfriend always double clicks links. She also uses a Mac at work and
thought she wouldn't be able to access her webmail on my PC because I didn't
have Safari.

~~~
JanHancic
Almost everybody I know (that isn't in IT) double-clicks on links. Even my ex-
boss (who was a programmer back in the day) double-clicks on links. And no
matter how many times you try to explain the concept of "single-click" to
them, they don't seem to get it.

~~~
scott_s
Or don't care and don't want to build in a special case.

~~~
derefr
Perhaps we should get the browser makers to make double-clicking links do
something _else_ , then; as it is, no amount of IT whinging will teach people
to stop doing something that _works anyway_ , just because it's technically
non-optimal.

~~~
scott_s
Does it bother you that it's not optimal? It doesn't bother the people who do
it. I think breaking things on purpose just to stop a behavior that's not
harmful is unwise.

~~~
derefr
Doesn't bother _me_ , but it does seem to bother the people who come up with
these lists. (I am slightly bothered, though, by people who click on a a link,
and then click it again when it's "loading too slowly," thinking that they're
hurrying it along instead of going back to the start of a new request.) The
best solution in both cases would be for the browser to simply ignore any
attempts to load a GET of URL X in a given frame/window/tab when it's already
attempting to load the same GET of URL X in that frame/window/tab.

~~~
IChrisI
I click links again if it's been more than a few seconds. I know full well it
starts a new request, but often that works faster than letting the old request
time out and be re-sent.

------
zck
>8\. What Memory (RAM) Is For

The best analogy I can find for RAM is short-term memory. RAM holds less stuff
than long-term memory (hard disk), but is faster to access. And if you don't
put an item into long-term memory (write to disk), you forget it (when the
power is turned off). People seem to understand that.

~~~
rufo
I tend to liken RAM to a table, programs/data to books, and the hard drive to
a bookshelf.

You can't read stuff on a bookshelf; you have to take it out and put it on the
table to open it. (Sure, you can read a book on a couch, but this is the
computer we're talking about - it has certain rules.)

You can take out as many books from the bookshelf as you like, as long as they
fit on the open table.

If you run out of table space, you need to make more space on the table, and
the only way to do that is to put books back on the shelf.

If you're trying to open too many books at once with too little table space,
the only thing you can do is constantly go back and forth between the
bookshelf and the table, open the book, find your place, etc., read a word,
take it back, open the previous book, write it down, etc., and it's going to
take you way longer to do the same work.

~~~
Periodic
That's a great analogy. I like it. I've been using the short-term memory
analogy, but this fits a lot better. I know that we don't entirely understand
our brain, but everyone understands books and a table.

Too bad memory is divided into "pages" and not "books".

~~~
jimbokun
Or, equivalently, the table/bookshelf is a great analogy for short and long
term memory. :)

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chaosmachine
_"Now that monitors are much slimmer, people understand that the monitor is
just a display mechanism, and the computer actually is under the desk."_

This is going to become less common. Many PC manufactures are now making iMac-
style, everything-jammed-into-a-flat-panel systems.

~~~
pyre
The only issue that I take with people that don't understand that the monitor
is not the computer: What do they think that the box under the desk is for?

It's pretty easy to set up 'rules' for this:

* If there is a box attached to the monitor (under the desk or otherwise) then the box is the computer.

* If everything is plugged directly into the monitor, then the monitor _is_ the computer.

It's pretty simple, but people either just don't care or have it stuck in
their heads that 'this' is the way the world is... and some people's opinions
don't turn on a dime.

~~~
dkarl
_What do they think that the box under the desk is for?_

What do you think the thing hanging down the back of your throat is for?

~~~
pyre
Point taken. I guess what I really take issue with is when people have these
concepts (i.e. 'the computer is the monitor') and then you try to tell them
different, and they fight you tooth and nail to keep you from changing their
'view of the world.'

It's like someone _knows_ that you're knowledgeable about a subject so they
ask you a question, and you respond by informing them that most of what they
think they know is wrong (and then telling them how things really are). Then
they get pissed off and basically tell you that they know more about the
subject than you do.

------
trunnell
_8\. What Memory (RAM) Is For_

I like to use a desk metaphor when explaining disk vs. RAM to relatives, etc.

If the hard disk is the filing cabinet, the amount of RAM is like the size of
your desk. You can take a file out of the filing cabinet and work on it at
your desk. If you take out 5 files, you need a bigger desk. If you run out of
room on the desk, you have to put files back in the cabinet, e.g. close the
window. It's not a perfect metaphor but for some reason they usually get it
much better than talking about RAM as "what your programs use."

EDIT: oops, it looks like I'm not the only one with this idea
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853104>

------
pchristensen
#9: "I’ve saved my files on the office computer; how can I get them on the
laptop?"

I instantly thought of Dropbox - and they mentioned it two paragraphs later as
a way to magically solve this problem.

I seriously can't praise Dropbox enough for its awesomeness.

~~~
jimbokun
So a good way to look for other business ideas is to look at other issues on
the list and brainstorm solutions for them, similarly to the way Dropbox
solved the problem of moving files between computers for non-computer experts.

------
juanchico
can we stop using IT to mean "desktop support"? It's sort of like the Visual
Basic of programming. What I mean is, it's quite similar to the debate over
job titles "programmer" versus "software engineer". But I guess I'm going
against the grain on this one.

Or maybe it all starts here and will snowball and take over.

~~~
enobrev
In my experience, IT includes desktop support. When I was in IT (sys-admin for
the company I worked for and did on-site support in data centers for our
server / client product for major banks on wall street), I still found myself
doing an inordinate amount of desktop support. In many cases one does not
exist without the other.

------
jmorin007
#11 the difference between "upload" and "download".

------
TrevorJ
I've found that what concepts people understand or don't is greatly effected
by personality and the way there own minds are organized.

On that note, it would be fascinating to see if there is a way to use a some
sort of psychological profile and a standardized approach that would allow for
programs to be customized for each individual. Yes, this is pretty pie-in-the-
sky but _Someday_ it would be a really interesting development.

~~~
stakent
I've found that people don't understand and can't do many things if they see
_no_ personal gain in understanding or doing.

Contrary to my findings I like your idea very much.

Maybe the proliferation of webapps is the first steep in this direction?
Gathering massive amounts of data about using application by individual users
plus tools used for behavioral analysis - maybe?

~~~
TrevorJ
I'm thinking even simpler than that, although your approach is interesting as
well. Psychologist have gotten very good at using a series of questions to
figure out basic personality traits. If you could develop a test that
generates values which can be shared in a standardized manner with any
program, then those programs could all present data in ways that make sense to
the user.

Example: Macintosh has several different options for how you interact with
files (cover flow, collapsible folders, icons) If all of the programs that
allow for file interaction knew that I am visual and prefer to see coverflow
by default then I'd feel much more at home as an end user becasue my
interactions become more consistent no matter what program I am using.

Other areas that could benefit: color usage/dialogue boxes.

Overall paradigms for file organization - I, for instance am very spatially
aware, whereas many people would prefer rigid folder hierarchy as the method
of choice for organizing and finding files.

------
sketerpot
I met a group of several people who were very persistently trying to put a
floppy disk in a CD-ROM drive. They refused to listen to my polite
explanations that it just doesn't go in that slot. They tried for half an
hour, and I think they broke the CD-ROM drive at some point.

Ignorance is understandable. I'm ignorant about all sorts of things. But what
I don't get is _willful_ ignorance.

------
keefe
I really hope these issues have not persisted into 2009. I think basic
computer literacy up to introductory programming is equivalent to literacy of
the written word : not difficult, but revolutionary and absolutely necessary.

~~~
whughes
You're conflating a few different types of computer literacy. Introductory
programming, especially nowadays, doesn't have much to do with knowing whether
the monitor is the computer or how to transfer files over a network. Certainly
if you're programming for math or science you might not need those 'general
computer skills.'

~~~
keefe
I'm deliberating lumping basic hardware and software literacy together.
Everybody should understand the relationship between secondary storage, ram
and the CPU. Everybody should understand that a computer program takes pieces
of data in RAM and manipulates them using the CPU and has to make a special
effort to get them to and from secondary storage or from a network connection
and every should be able to basically understand how a program is, at some
level of abstraction, a set of instructions for the computer to follow. They
don't have to necessarily have particular operational skills - transference
files on a particular networked system for example - but the basic knowledge
of what is going on should be there.

~~~
enobrev
Just to clarify, are your referring to a specific group of people as
"everyone" or do you actually feel that every human being should know these
things? If the latter, what purpose does knowing what RAM, storage and the CPU
have for anyone who merely uses a computer to email and "google"?

~~~
keefe
Yes, I feel that everyone should learn these things. Why not? It's like two
weeks of work at most to understand basically what is going on in hardware.
I'm pretty sure they teach these things in high school or even grade school
these days. I'm not suggesting knowing low level details, but understanding
the basics of computation - here is this big universe of data out there in
secondary storage but I need to grab a part of it into short term memory, do
something with it and then stuff it back. It turns out that computation is a
fundamental part of our universe (wolfram's a new kind of science and other
works talk about this) and there's a lot to be gained by understanding what
data is, the different ways it can live and how it is manipulated in modern
computers. The CPU/RAM/storage cycle is fundamental and understanding this
informs a lot of things. It's also pretty key to learning introductory
programming, which I believe impacts basic thought processes in the same way
that knowing basic math does.

~~~
enobrev
While I don't agree that everyone should know these things, you make solid
points.

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apotheon
My response was too long for a comment here, so I posted it elsewhere:

<http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1633>

~~~
enobrev
The smugness in your blog post devours any point that could have come across
as useful.

------
stakent
So we need to hear feedback.

So far so good.

But what to do to hear those who don't talk to us? Whose do not fill out
feedback forms, don't reply to mails, don't talk on the phone?

They don't care enough to respond. They don't know how to respond.

But at least some of their insights are valuable. How to reach them?

