My own Rant of the Day

[samsmithnz]

We had a meeting all day yesterday talking about this new line of applications we're about to develop to help streamline some internal processes, and someone in the meeting mentioned they were concerned that the users would forget how to do some fundamental tasks. This got me thinking, and I came up with this:

 

"The smarter we get, the dumber we make our users."

 

I feel this is true on so many levels. As we automate (especially complicated) tasks, no one knows how things work anymore.

 

Anyone care to comment?

[Iceplug]

Well, if someone really wants to learn, they'll find out somehow, but if you make things simpler, its easier to make really complicated stuff (as the simple stuff becomes complex, the underlying complexion gets really complex).

I do agree that using the high level stuff makes low level stuff become abstract.

(Just how the big programming languages are easier to use than the low-level ones.)

[iebidan]

its' the natural way of things in the companies, we get all the work, and we (IT People) need to simplify things out, I've the same problem here.

In the old days, inventories were kept using paper, today is done using a really big app that keeps track of everything, makes reports in just a few minutes, costs, etc etc etc. ask the guy that inserts things in the app how to make a report, he'll tell you that you need to select the reports option in the application :D

 

Every day a new problem that needs to be simplified comes to my desk, and everyday I think over and over on changing jobs :D

[TechnoTone]

"The smarter we get, the dumber we make our users."

I disagree. The point is that by removing the tasks that can be automated we are left with the tasks that currently cannot be easily automated but the overall effect is that productivity increases.

 

As for forgetting the knowledge that has now been automated - one word: "Documentation". We don't need to have experts in the "old ways" but as long as that knowledge is documented somewhere then it is not lost.

[hog]

Well my view is that one day something big will happen that will make computers and basically anything with a chip in it useless and we shall all be forced back into Victorian times.

 

Just think about it, the world as we know it would just end and chaos would rule supreme until such time that society evolved to deal with the new way of life.

 

Every day on my way to work the traffic is worse, the way people drive is getting worse all due to impatience and being ruled by time!

 

Yes I know it would be absolutely terrible and life would be hard but we are on a road where something has got to give. We just can't keep on making things faster and faster.

 

Oh woe is me.....it's Friday, I'm tired of the rat race........I want to live out in the wild like that Grizzly Adams fellow......

 

:(

[reboot]

Yes, I think technology is making imbeciles out of many of the current generation. True story. I hope you find this as amusing as it is sad. On the way home from work recently, I called and ordered pizza from a place near my house. I pulled through the drive thru window and a teenage girl opened it, asked my name, and then told me the total was $13.75. I handed her a 20. Now, my 10 year old could have made that change in his head, without pause, and without even really thinking about it. She took the 20, walked over to the cash register, and opened it. She stood there a minute in thought, took out some money, then put it back and closed the drawer. She stood there a minute longer, then opened the drawer again, thought about it some more, then closed the drawer yet again. Apparently the computer on the cash register was broken or something. At this point, she reaches under the counter and pulls out a calculator, which she proceded to punch numbers into for a good two minutes. And finally she opens the drawer and takes out my six dollars and a quarter. I feel afraid for our future when a High School junior or senior can't make simple change.

[Heiko]

True.

That discussion is being held since the invention of the pocket calculator :-)

[Mike Bailey]

One thing I think everyone has over looked.

 

Because of the automation making things easer; more people are using computers. Due to that fact alone more people are using computers; there using them to learn things. Things they probable would have never tried to learn before. Our automated technology gives me more time to learn things like ---> what my kids are doing in School and who her friends are. My 4 year old can already add and subtract Thanks to the automation of computer programs.

 

Just something to think about

 

Mike Bailey

[sjn78]

I think the biggest problem people have is that they know that computers can do everything for them. Their mindset is 'I don't have to learn to spell, add, subtract etc because Word has spell checker' and so on.

 

I knew someone who wanted a music CD burnt and she was a Graduate Psychologist. I spent nearly half an hour working out what music she wanted because the spelling was so shocking.

 

It's the same here at work. I will spend a week doing a huge task that is not easy, and then someone will see it and say they want the same thing by the next day. I tell them thats its not possible so they will take the job externally and get consultants to do it, which ends costing them twice as much, takes twice as long and they quality is poor. My work is far better than the consultants but do I get paid their wages? Far from it. This is starting to go away from the original post, but oh well, it's my rant of the day!!

 

Some people have no concept on what it takes to do many things nowadays and I think this will cause huge problems later on when someone with all of the knowledge in specific software or project leaves the company. Who will pick up from were they left off?

[Nerseus]

Writing a complex program doesn't proclude an individual from learning how the underlying logic works. Hopefully, any complex system is well documented so that an interested user could read the specs and see what's really going on without delving into code.

 

In fact, I would hope that any complex program that needs to be written as a computer program would first be spec'd out before ANY coding was done. You can't code a solution to a problem you don't fully understand. Or at least, not a good solution. Imagine trying to "solve" a calculus formula without really knowing calculus (or at least the parts related to the problem).

 

Making complicated tasks easy is what most applications DO - it's their primary goal. Hopefully a user will already know what it SHOULD do, they just want the application to do it for them. If there are ambiguous parts, they can/should read the spec.

 

No program, in my mind, should be a "black box" - only "clear" boxes.

 

-Nerseus

[samsmithnz]

In a perfect world, all projects would be perfectly speced before we start, and fully documented when we finish. Unfortunetly we still live in a world where people don't know exactly what they want, or if they do they change their mind, or both of these. Combine this with the fact that a lot of people replace documentation with 'training' (instead of having both), and it paints a very grim future for some projects...

[Heiko]

But we also live in world were customers demand a fixed price :-)

[Bodybag]

Talking about the users becoming idiots.What about the programmers.Life has been made easy for us. We have have nice ide's to work with .Nice database systems and so on.We don't have to suffer making our forms or own components like in the older days.I remember my old days in Turbo c++ 3. Now making a form in those days was a mission. a Lot of data was stored in flat files and quering those files was no breeze. So life has become a lot easier.

[Heiko]

PDP-11

64 KB Main Memory.

Overlay Definitions for the Linker.

Cool stuff.

 

:-)