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.
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.
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.
Forcing children with disabilities to do it
If we are making children do things we should be teaching them the correct way to do it, not half assing it.
…which includes cursive. Also for disabled folks, as far as possible: At that point you’re teaching fine motor mechanics first and foremost, secondly writing. How quickly they write is of no great consequence (or we’d be teaching shorthand), how well their motor skills develop is. The usual approach here is that you get a set cursive with a couple of options and alternative glyph shapes for the first four years, then you can develop from there as you wish. Some kids arguably should get more hand-holding in the “develop for yourself” part.
That you didn’t learn it the right way is a thing you can blame on your teachers, but not cursive. Like, I mentioned pencils and fountain pens, ball-point pens are outlawed in schools here: It’s so that kids don’t use pressure, which makes them not tense up and cramp, which makes developing proper technique way easier. Though if the coordination issues are sub-clinical they generally should be sorted out before primary school starts, that’s a job for the kindergarten, making sure that everyone has a proper baseline in physical, social, and language skills.
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.
The trouble with fountain pens is that they don’t really expect you to not write for a month or two. The ones with built-in tank would be less annoying there as you can easily uncrust everything by pulling in some ink through the feather (is that what the tip is called in English? I have no idea), but their great downside is that when they make a mess, they make a real mess. Ink rollers you can put in a pocket without worrying and they don’t really dry out. Mostly though you don’t have to ram them into the paper to write.
Also, clutch pencils. Those mechanical ones that take leads that are as thick as usual wood-encased ones, and that you sharpen. If you ever have like 10 bucks burning a hole in your pocket get yourself some koh-i-noor clutch pencils and collection of leads (usual is HB but I’d suggest trying out 2B for writing), suitable sharpener (pencils come with an emergency one but it’s not too nice), as well as two tombow erasers: The ordinary one, and the dust catch one. Life’s too precious to waste nerves on shoddy leads and erasers. Also a Faber-Castel kneadable eraser: Even if you don’t draw it’s occasionally useful to be able to have a fine eraser tip. koh-i-noor leads are reportedly good enough for both artists and engineers and, truth be told, what could be a more perfect combination of endorsements. And, as said, like 10 bucks total.
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?
Lol. I just went googling and it was Qbasic Gorrilas! Now that takes me back.
AI powered keyboard let’s go. Honestly the amount of typing I’ve been able to cut out by just clicking the ai suggested replies in Teams instead of actually typing something out to respond to my coworkers is pretty high.
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
This is why I feel disconnected from most of my gen z people
Being able to operate a cell phone doesn’t make you tech savvy
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.
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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
True, but otherwise I just type faster normally.
Can confirm, it’s worth the effort.
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).
Anything beyond ~2002 became worse than the predecessor in IT related tasks.
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I’m part of Gen Z, and no, we as a generation AREN’T tech savvy. just because we grew up with smart phones does not make us tech savvy. in fact, i actually think it made us dumber with tech. i’m the only one in my school who knows how to use a command line and code (i also use linux as my daily driver). meanwhile everyone else doesn’t even know what a freaking file manager is
The boomers had cars and flexed being able to drive stick or know what a carburetor is, unlike those feeble Millennials. They had that greaser subculture. Hmm. I guess that makes the movie Grease the equivalent of War Games or Hackers.
So what is the zoomer thing? What eye-rolling help do they give to doddering old gen-Xers? What will they flex in their old age?
The darned neural implant generation doesn’t even know how to doomscroll with their fingers. Kids these days smh no cap.
The tech-savvy reputation comes from the “digital native” narrative i.e. because they grew up with computers they must know computers, which is a silly fallacy because how one interacts with technology makes all the difference. It’s the same reason why everyone who grew up with electricity isn’t necessarily an electrician.
The tech savvy reputation comes from millenials. We ARE tech savvy.
Only the early ones. By definition millenials are birth years 1981 to 1996, so the last ones were 11 when the first iPhone released.
I think every generation has their percentage of nerds and that just was a little higher in late Gen X and early millenials because computers were so new and you had to tinker to get anything working.
As an older Gen Z, yeah you guys probably have a better grasp on modern tech. Weirdly enough I actually have found that a weirdly high amount of folks my age know old analogue tech better, like vacuum tubes and old cars.
Older gen z here too, born in ‘99, and while I haven’t noticed the analogue thing, I’ve 100% noticed tech illiteracy in general.
Like, I’m talking about having a downloads folder full of junk because they don’t know that that’s where downloads end up. Installers left untouched after programs are installed because they’re worried that deleting the installer will delete the installed program.
Imo being raised with closed ecosystems like iPhones really stunted tech literacy for a lot of people. I grew up jailbreaking my phones and used my parent’s windows pc, so I kind of escaped it.
Yeah im also '99, and the weird analogue thing is probably regional. Yeah I agree that the tech illiteracy comes down largely to closed systems like Iphone, the most tech literate folks I know that are our age were largely on the poorer side of working class. Which makes sense if you are using hand me down tech ya probably will be doing a bit of debugging.
Like, I’m talking about having a downloads folder full of junk because they don’t know that that’s where downloads end up.
Funny enough, at work I’ll often re-download a file if I need it because it’s faster to go to my bookmark, load the page, download the file, and then click on it in my browser’s recent downloads. Windows search is sooooooo absurdly slow.
But then came smartphones, and instead they grew up with that…
In the days of Apple II and similar machines a person who operated a computer knew it, because computers were simpler and because there was no other way and because you’d generally buy a cheaper toy if you didn’t want to learn it.
Also techno-optimism of the 70s viewed the future as something where computers make the average person more powerful in general - through knowing how to use a computer in general, that is, knowing how to write programs (or at least “create” something, like in HyperCard).
That was the narrative consistent with the rest of technology and society of that time, where any complex device would come with schematics and maintenance instructions.
Then something happened - most humans couldn’t keep up with the growing complexity. Something like that happened with me when I went to uni with undiagnosed AuDHD. There was a general path in the future before me - going there and learning there - but I didn’t know how I’m going to do that, and I just tried to persuade myself that I must, it should happen somehow if I do same things others do with more effort. Despite pretense and self-persuasion, I failed then.
It’s similar to our reality. The majority stopped understanding what happens around them, but kept pretending and persuading itself that it’s just them, that the new generation is fine with it all, that they don’t need those things they fail to understand, etc. Like when in class you don’t understand something, but pretend to. All the older generation does that. The younger generation does another thing - they try to ignore parts of the world they don’t understand, like hiding their heads in the sand. Or like a bullied kid just tries not to think about bullies. Or like a person living in a traditionally oppressive state just avoids talking about politics and society.
That narrative has outlived its reality not only with computers.
People are eager to believe in magic. Do you need to know how to cook if you have dinner and breakfast trees (thank you, LF Baum)? So they think we have such trees. It’s an illusion, of course. Very convenient, isn’t it, to make so many industries inaccessible to amateurs.
It’s very simple. There’s such a thing as “too complex”. The tower of Babel is one fitting metaphor.
You don’t need this complexity in an AK rifle. Just like that, you don’t need it in an analog TV. And in a digital TV you need much less complexity too. We don’t have it in our boots - generally. We don’t have it in our shirts. Why would we have it in things with main functionality closer to them in complexity than to SW combat droids?
I think Stanislaw Lem called this a “combinatoric explosion” when predicting it in one of his essays.
Being a tool user doesn’t make one a tool maker, though having grown up in the days you had to assemble and maintain your own tools does naturally facilitate growing into the latter from the former.
Right? I grew up with pen and paper, but I’m better with keyboards.
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I was the electronics guy at walmart and just…holy shit the kids buying laptops. A lot didn’t even know how to work the keyboard. They would touch a non touchscreen laptop then ask me ‘if it isn’t touch screen then how do you work it’. Thats just one of a million amazing questions I got.
I know a bit of it is…iono…location bias? Most kids who know computers are probably shopping online or microcenter or something but still.
I had a girl drop out of my University class because she couldn’t figure out what a “file” was or how to “email” it to me. She just kept trying to share her Apple storage with me. Really sad. It’s hard to help someone who gets to university without even grasping the basic nature of a file system.
Gen Z is app savvy, not tech savvy. Very very different.
The problem is non-savvy people classifying connecting a Bluetooth or wifi as complicated.
Dang kids don’t know how to tune a TV or do the tappets in their car!
They’ll be screwed if they find themselves in 1980!
This article only covers typing, but younger gen z and gen alpha are (not at all to their blame) woefully bad at understanding technology. Even using their own devices, like the iphone, outside of a few dozen common apps can be challenging. Let alone desktop OSs, servers and things like printing.
I stress that I absolutely do not say this to call them dumb or ignorant. They have not been given other resources and were not raised on other kinds of tech. And as the article points out, older generations in administration and management positions falsely equate this “app savy” intelligence to tech ability. That is where the blame lies mostly not with the young teenagers and kids.
Their parents don’t even give them PCs, only phones, how would they even learn?
Being able to use TikTok on your phone doesn’t make you tach savvy. They don’t know anything about how it all works. It’s a false dichotomy.
Yeah. I’ve noticed the new generation coming into the workplace can’t do shit on a computer.
They’ve grown up on apps that have simple interfaces and limited options. Give them the freedom and power of a workstation and you’ll find they never learned to learn real software.
Gen X that think Gen Zs are tech savvy are probably the people that the actual Gen X nerds shake their head at when we have to teach them how to put an URL in the address bar instead of searching for Gmail and clicking on the link every. goddamn. time.
Yes, as a Gen X I’m sometimes surprised how tech illiterate some of my generation are…
Then I remember when we were kids and people like me using computers were seen as weird geeks and “normal people” wouldn’t get close to a computer.
Ngl I hate most of the new domain options. Was that site a .com or .net was fine. Now you have a dozen common options and many sites have a silly name. Look at lemmy itself for great examples of it.
I’m a programmer. I write hundreds of lines of code a day (of varying levels of quality ofc). I also fix technology (phones, laptops, desktops. tablets, etc). I’m probably one of the most “tech-savvy” people I know. I very rarely type faster than 70 wpm. it’s just not necessary for what most of us are doing.
But think about arguing online! It’s apparently a hobby and to be competitive, you need to be able to spew bullshit at amazing rates. Personally I’ve maxed out at 140 wpm, but usually stay in the 100 wpm range.
Programming? Idk, I spend more time thinking than typing personally. Good code requires you to consider all the corner cases and such.
I prefer to argue on the internet via my phone, which I can type pretty fast on thanks to the swipe to type.
and yeah programming simply doesn’t require fast typing, I tend to diagram everything out on my whiteboard before even opening my ide. I just have to write tons and tons of code since I’m in a few low level programming classes
I diagram everything out in my brain and it evolves continuously while I’m writing code
Sometimes I feel it’s a miracle I get anything done at all but then usually the end result is better than what I’d originally envisioned so it kinda balances out.
I used to do that but the more I get into os programming the more I’ve found myself scrapping entire 1000+ line files and rewriting the entire thing 🙃
and I think “it’s a miracle I get anything done” is a very common thought in most programmers heads lol
and yeah programming simply doesn’t require fast typing
Funny enough making MC plugins and mods while moderating my own server was what got me to over 100 WPM
Because without meds my brain fires so fast that if I DIDNT type at 115 I’d have forgotten where my for loop was going before ive even finished the conditions it triggers under
My code is slooooooopppyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy thanks to that, but it’s also not for anyone else’s eyes ever so im good
The someone else’s eyes are your eyes a few months down the line when you have to fix something
Bold of you to assume I don’t just let those errors in the log pile up
If I don’t look at the log then they don’t exist!
It’s apparently a hobby and to be competitive, you need to be able to spew bullshit at amazing rates. Personally I’ve maxed out at 140 wpm
I’m limited by the rate at which I can think of bullshit.
Agreed. I write slow and incomprehensible. I read slow with shit comprehension. Passed engineering school with very high GPA and am successful in my engineering career. These metrics are bullshit boomer click bait.
Almost as bad as “Gen z/a can’t read analog clocks!”
I think the panic around analog clocks comes from the scenario where you have to explain what clockwise and counterclockwise is. I have personally seen someone eventually removed from a workgroup because they couldn’t understand it.
Not that analog clocks matter, but that was an easy way to teach direction in cylindrical coordinates. What can we use now for that?
I hope someone said “watch your 6” and they slammed the door on their ass.
80wpm is pretty common for a typical average typing speed for anybody who can touch type, 100wpm is more common among programmers, and people who do a lot of typing. Anything faster than that and you have had hand injuries and use a fancy keyboard now, or you will soon have hand injuries.
typing speed is rather funny.
I type 120. How fucked am I, doctor?
if you do it for sustained periods for long periods of time, you should probably think about investing in one of those fancy ortholinear keyboards, or whatever works best for you. Maybe switch to dvorak or azerty for funsies or something.
if you don’t type very regularly, it’s probably not as big of a deal.
It is so much better I switched to a 36 key split ortho keyboard(draculad) with colemak and layers to reach keys farther then 1 key away normally it feels amazing
yeah, once you’re using a keyboard designed for actual hand positioning, it’s much more manageable and generally, a lot less taxing on the individual.
People believe just because someone interacts with some sort of digital device, it makes you an expert on computers. The thing is, it depends on the type of operating system you are interacting with.
For example when I was young, my father would buy those big old gray computers from yard sales. I would mix and match the pieces inside to build my own PC. I broke a lot of shit but learned a lot.
The operating system was one where you more or less had total control over the computer. By 12~13 I was using CD-Roms to load different Linux distros and play around with all sorts of different things.
This experience basically taught me how operating systems work at a fundamental level. How it needs a kernel, how it loads and maintains services, packages, etc. How file systems work and learning how terminals are useful. Scripting languages, and eventually coding applications.
Compare and contrast that to the young kids of today. What do they get? A phone and a tablet. You can’t open it up. You can’t tinker with it. The OS is closed off and is deliberately made as difficult as possible to modify. No mouse, no keyboard. Streamlined UIs with guard rails.
You get what you get and you don’t get upset. That doesn’t leave nearly as much room for exploration and curiosity. It’s a symptom of our computers becoming more and more railroaded. More and more control by large companies.
It’s really sad, I think. Fairly soon I believe every device will be a “thin device” or essentially a chrome book. Very little local processing power and instead it’ll essentially stream from a server.
I just want to echo your sentiment with something I’ve been saying here for a while now:
Do not confuse information technology use for computer literacy.
Z is not savvy. They’re basically boomers when it comes to tech. It always worked so it should work. None of our z staff can fix a printer and in fact none are allowed to
Z is not savvy. They’re basically boomers when it comes to tech. It always worked so it should work. None of our z staff can fix a printer and in fact none are allowed to
they can be savvy, it just depends on how based and tech pilled they are. If they’ve only ever used a phone for example, they aren’t. If they use linux as a daily driver, they definitely are.
Statistically, on average, gen z is less likely to be tech savvy though.
although in defense of gen z, fuck printers.
fuck printers.
Agreed :(
single worst human invention ngl
a stone tablet would be better tbh
probably. I think we should just be moving to engraved metal sheeting.
Fair enough
Not a very enlightened take. As @[email protected] correctly put it, tech savviness is the property of an individual and not of a generation. There are non-savvy Zoomers, just as there are non-savvy people from your generation.
Of course, but the percentage of capable zoomers who are actually tech savvy is much smaller than millenials, for the reasons already stated.
Just the other day I witnessed a zoomer grad student who didn’t know how to use a file explorer on his new windows laptop because he had grown up with an iPad and iPhone.
People are saying it’s an individual issue but I will say that kids who grew up on iPads and iPhones definitely are less tech literate when it comes to using PCs. Utilizing file explorer or even a command line (gasp) is completely out of their comfort zone.
If something doesn’t work like it should, they generally call tech support to figure it out rather than Google and solve it themselves.
This is generally. I taught fifth grade math and science for five years and the lack of a true computer resource class has really hurt kids. I had to spend 4-5 weeks each year teaching 10-11 year olds how to use computers. What copy and paste is, how to sign on to programs, how to attach a document, how to navigate a web portal, how to type on a keyboard, how to navigate Google slides/powerpoint or Google docs/word, etc because before fifth grade they had iPads instead of Chromebooks. Out of the 40-50 students I’d have each year, maybe 2 would know how to do even three of these things.
Most didn’t even know how to sign on because they were able to use faceid or use a QR code to sign in before fifth grade.
The natural result of getting rid of computer literacy classes.
There was just some assumption that the knowledge was somehow inherent, like the RF from cellphones entered the womb and taught them how to troubleshoot their PC.
like the RF from cellphones entered the womb and taught them how to troubleshoot their PC
Wait, it doesn’t work that way? But that’s what all the super trustworthy conspiracy theorists have been saying all the time! RF is dangerous and manipulates your brain /s
It seems like a kind of horseshoe thing where Boomers are computer illiterate because they weren’t around when they were growing up, while Zoomers are computer illiterate because they grew up primarily interfacing with technology via the simplified, corporate-approved mobile phone platforms. Gen X and Milliennials came of age when computers were still more of a Wild West.
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Douglas Adams
Hmmm…truly new tech that came out after I was 35…
VR …yeah pretty cool, my partner has one but I’m not a gamer and don’t generally go for anything gaming anyways. Use it more widely for non gaming uses tho and I’m on board. Self driving cars …cool, don’t have one, never been in one, but I’m all over learning/using that shit if it becomes mainstream AI… personally not a fan, mostly cuz I think it could be like nukes where it’s used for more bad than good, but I’ve messed my way around ChatGPT and it’s whatevs. Probably eventually very useful if we don’t murder ourselves first.
Personally, having gotten our first school PCs when I was in 7th grade (92’ -ish), I find that I tend to at least be curious and want to learn about new tech. So I wonder if the late genX, early millennials might break rule #3 just cuz we were forced to know more about computers to run them and thus don’t view tech as inherently scary. Then again, I’m always fucking around with stuff and my siblings (2 yrs older and younger) are always like “woah how u do dat?!?”…maybe im just a lazy oddball always looking for a way to shortcut my life with technology.
Technically I’m the the first category, since personal computers have been around since before I was born and started going semi-mainstream before I was 15, but they didn’t really take off in popularity until I was in the second age category, so that one fits me the best.
Generally speaking, you learn more about how something works when the core functionality is exposed to the user, and just janky enough to require fiddling with it and fixing things.
This is true of lots of things like cars, drones, 3D printers, and computers. If you get a really nice one, it just works and you don’t have to figure anything out. A cheap one, or something you have to build yourself, makes you have to learn how it actually works to get it to run right.
Now that things are so comodified and simplified, they just work and really discourage tinkering, so people learn less about core functionality and how things actually work. Not always true, but a trend I’ve experienced.
That is a good analogy. I think phones and tablets being app-centric has really handicapped Zoomers in some ways. As Gen X, the first thing we learned about computers was the file system. That gave us a map of the computer. It also made it clear that the operating system, the applications running on the operating, and the data you generated and stored on the operating system were all different things. With app-centric devices and cloud-storage, people aren’t exposed to that paradigm so much.
The new paradigm is more account-centric. You have a Microsoft account or a Google account or an Apple account and that’s the ecosystem you work within.
The number of people i’m seeing use caps lock instead of shift to do capital letters have been increasing. “Oh you can do that?”
First time I saw a Zoomer do that it hurt my soul.
What goes around…apparently. My 57 year old co-worker does the same thing and it drives me batty.
There was this one kid I knew from school many years ago who used the caps lock to make capitals claiming it was easier cause you didn’t have to hold it down. Like bro… just use sticky keys
Gen X here. Honestly, I was a shit typer until I got a keyboard for my sega dreamcast and bought “Typing of the dead”.
I went from hunt and peck to well over 100wpm.
Typing of the dead
Still my favorite example of gamification: take a useful task and make it so fun that people will gladly devote hours and hours of their time to it.
I didn’t know I was learning a life skill at the time. I was having such a good time playing and wanted to get better and better. I guess this sorta holds true for any sport.
My girlfriend (wife now) at the time also played with me using two keyboards. She types over 120wpm.
I didn’t know I was learning a life skill at the time.
The House of the Dead 2 was a really popular arcade game at the time, so adapting the preexisting game into an at-home typing trainer was actually genius innovation.
Millennial, StarCraft on 56k modem (no voip). Type like a raccoon but fast.
