Why, oh why, do people do things like this?

[Moirae]

lol. There's alot of people out there that seriously just don't have a clue and are too worried that they will screw up something. Doing basic things on a computer is not hard and rather beneficial because most of the free world revolves around computers now.

I can understand having to teach someone in their 80's (I had to teach my grandmother how to scroll down the screen when my aunt sent me some pictures in email to give to gramma) but a 30 or 40 year have no real excuse not to know the basics when computers are everywhere.

Even my 57 year old father sat his butt down and bought some books to learn how to use it. He still isn't quite sure how to attach pictures to an email (must remember to show him someday soon) but I can say certain things now and he doesn't give me a blank stare anymore.

I seriously had a woman call up (she must have been around 40 or 45 years old) and ask "I have this thing. When I push a button it comes out of the computer. It's flat, and has a round hole in the middle, and looks kind of like a cup holder. What is it?"

I sat there stunned for a second and said "That's your CD-ROM drive, Ma'am. They're like regular CD's only they work in a computer."

Then she says "Oh. And this other one right next to it. it's about three inches long and looks like I can stick something inside it. What's that?"

Now I'm fighting laughing into the phone and say "That's your floppy disk drive. They're little hard disks you can record on and take to another computer if you need to."

Then she says "Oh, ok. Thank you, you've been alot of help."

I almost exploded with laughter after I got off the phone.

[AFpheonix]

We didn't have computers that had mouses in grade school or junior high. I remember playing a lot of DOS based Oregon Trail and Math Mansion in grade school, along with the standard LOGO. They did offer a computer class in Junior High, but the computers were amazingly old, so all we could really do was learn BASIC programming on them. The elderly computer we had at home was more advanced, even though it was still just a DOS machine. Got really good at altering my player files on XWing so that I wouldn't get dinged if I happened to die mid-mission

High school had some apples with Mac OS, so it really wasn't until then that I learned about using mice. We got a 386 with Windows 3.1 somewhere in there, too, and eventually "upgraded" to a Pentium 75mghz with Windows 95 on it. I got a laptop for graduation that was a Pentium 200mghz with Win95. That was a big deal, hoo boy

[Thrifty]

I wonder if they're still teaching BASIC in schools now . . .[/QUOTE]

This past semester I took a beginning computers course at my university and we learned in BASIC

[Kusanagi]

We didn't have computers that had mouses in grade school or junior high. I remember playing a lot of DOS based Oregon Trail and Math Mansion in grade school, along with the standard LOGO. <snip>

You killed 4,712 lbs of meat.

You were only able to carry 100 lbs back to the wagon.

[Crosshair]

You killed 4,712 lbs of meat.

You were only able to carry 100 lbs back to the wagon.

That really irritated me too. How hard is it to move the dammed wagon closer or even spend a few days getting all that meat preped. There would be times I could shoot ten buffalo and the next I would only be able to get a dumb rabbit. Heck, set up a buffalo burger stand for the winter and sell to people who need food.

[chantal]

I remember playing a lot of DOS based Oregon Trail

I loved that game so much that I went out and bought it (I was about 8 years old). I subsequently received Yukon Trail and Amazon Trail as Christmas/birthday presents. I remember beating/finishing both Oregon Trail and Yukon Trail, but I never got the hang of Amazon Trail. I believe I only made it to about the 5th Aztec/Mayan temple before I died of dysentry or got killed by the natives. Oh how I loved those games.

[Dragon_Dreamer]

Heh, Fang, they phased out teaching 6th-8th graders BASIC and LOGO (Lego LOGO ruled) soon after my class hit tenth grade. Class of 1999. I remember when the school got its very first four Macintoshes, in 6th grade. Took them a while to slowly get rid of all the Apple IIes.

Heck, I think the public library still has one, with all the old games! I loved playing the original Oregon Trail. I miss those old machines, sometimes.

[Moirae]

Have to say, I learned how to do the basic stuff on computers starting grade three in school, then Basic, Fortran and Pascal in high school. I learned HTML, C++, and... grrr, I can't remember the other one... in university. Guess you can tell how long it's been.

I've been teaching myself .php and java for web pages. I'd actually love to take classes on it at some point.

[LostMyMind]

It it was at a college and you learn Pascal around that time. I would bet the language you "can't" remember would be COBOL.

If you can learn by reading reference books or looking at examples, don't take classes. They will drive you insane.

I've taught myself every programing language I know, I can read/code in anything with a reference book. What they teach in class most of the time is on logic. If you can teach yourself, logic shouldn't be much of an issue.

I still when I met folks who call themselves programmers and can't do anything outside of what they were taught in class.

[ebonyknight]

<snip>

A 30 year old should know what double click means.
<snip>

A 30 year old, perhaps. But I didn't have any required computer courses and didn't need them until I got into college. In fact there weren't any available until I got into middle school and the school only had two Atari 800's available in the library. BTW, they didn't use a mouse.

Gen X'er born in '69

[DGoddessChardonnay]

<snip>
Gen X'er born in '69

I see we're the same age, so we know pretty much the same stuff

Remember the Commodore PET computers? We had thoe in our media center when I was in Junior High (aka Middle School.) About all you could do w/them then was play Space Invaders.

Typing Tutor is another one I recall vividly from high school. . . we had the Apple II's in our typing class back then (around 86-87) to use when we were done w/our daily assignments. I liked that so much I found a copy for my Commodore 64C (do they even make a PC version of that software now?)

Seems as if we were in the caveman days of PC'ing weren't we?

[Moirae]

COBOL, yep thats the one lol. But I couldn't take it anymore and quit. Though I wouldn't mind learning more for web programming. I'd love to be able to work at home on my own schedule.

[Mixed Bag]

I've heard of Intellivision games for Mac--and Sherwood Forest!

Let's see kids find it exciting to master a game by figuring out what words to type.

[Buglady]

lol, you don't need to learn programming to know how to double click a mouse and what a CD drive does.
<snip>
Honestly, I started learning computers in grade three.

I'm 32 and the computer mouse was not invented until I was in grade seven. My school didn't have computers *with* mice for all the students to use until I was in grade ten.

I started using a PC in 1993. Someone had to show me how to double click.