I have heard from friend that teach in higher end that students are struggling more and more with getting information from text. It seems those students have now found there way into the work force.
Yeah, one of my most often stated phrases at work is “you can’t make people read.”
Error pops up, explaining exactly what the issue is and how to fix it? Oh god, let me call IT to see what I need to do. Yeah, you can’t make people read.
Some piece of equipment or machinery has changed in some meaningful way? Management is quick to go “just hang a sign on it, letting people know the new process.” Nope, you can’t make people read. People will physically move the sign to the side, try to use the machine like they previously did, and get surprised when it doesn’t work as expected.
Some area is unsafe due to work happening overhead? “Oh just hang signs on the doors, telling people not to come in.” No, you can’t make people read; I have seen people push their way past physical barriers with big “do not enter” signs, just to ask if we’re open. How about we lock the doors, and disable the keyways on all the doors (except one, where we have physical barriers to entry) until the work is completed?
One of my old coworkers from a place I no longer work would come to me for every exception his code threw. Being generous, I understand his intentions, he was curious if they were known problems or things to avoid. That said, every time I asked him what line of code it happened on or if he’d searched online about it the answer was no. I was probably ~25 at the time and had a bachelor’s degree. He was definitely at least 50 and had a PhD.
Was going to say, very much seems like the opposite of a generational problem. Seems more like everything we’d vaguely define as ‘the tech industry’ has become big enough that it’s workforce now includes the individuals who wouldn’t have been considered competent 10 years ago.
But video is so damn annoying. If you wanna copy-paste something from the video, you’re fucked unless you pause and type each character by hand. I don’t get it.
The number of times I’ve seen screencaptures of text on a coding job that makes me think/say “you’re a coder, I’m a coder, you know we’ll need this as text, so what the fuck is wrong with you?” is too many.
Images of text happen way too often everywhere including lemmy.
And they grace us without alt text like they’re going out of their way to fuck us & people with accessibility needs especially hard.
The number of times I’ve all but rage-quit a ‘tutorial’ which is simply an open mic with ‘room’ noises and breathing over a video of someone typing things into a screen which is then captured on iPhone, is far too high.
It could be a series of documented steps with reasoning, interspersed with screenshots (themselves in a ‘spoiler’-style show/hide setup, and it would then take up 1/1000th the space, require 1/100th the time, and demonstrate the technique in a way I could go over a few times. The typing is interminably slow, watching for someone who says nothing but mouse-overs (and selects) text as a way of communication is frustrating, and the entire thing is a barrier to comprehension. Is it ADHD that makes it far, far preferable to just get a page I can review and pore over and repeat a few times, or is it just a learning style that isn’t passive?
Is it ADHD that makes it far, far preferable to just get a page I can review and pore over and repeat a few times, or is it just a learning style that isn’t passive?
Probably the learning style. I don’t have ADHD, but I can’t tolerate someone slowly explaining something over a 10 mins video. I know specifically what I need information about, so I need to be in control of the experience. A text tutorial I can skim until I get to the relevant part, but videos usually feel like they’re wasting my time. The only time I prefer videos over text is for DIY instructions where the physical actions are better conveyed in motion.
(Feels related to that I very rarely watch TV or films, and even when I do, I get antsy after half hour of just sitting around staring out of my face. So I tend to watch movies in half-hour sessions, which I often can’t be bothered to pick up again lol, and leave them unfinished for years 🙈 In a nutshell I much prefer video games as a hobby :D)
I have a handy little app on macOS called TextSniper that takes a screenshot of a selected area, then runs OCR on that screenshot and puts the text on the clipboard. It’s perhaps the most useful $10 I’ve ever spent and I’m frankly surprised this doesn’t exist on other systems. A year or two after this was released Apple started letting people copy text directly out of images, so they might do the usual Apple thing of killing it by directly adding it to the OS. There might be something like this on Linux by now but I haven’t heard of it on Windows.
A dev named funinkina has made an application working alongside the KDE screenshot application spectacle. It’s surprisingly lean code which utilizes tesseract and works fantastically. Just compile, ln -s the app to your bin directory and give it a global shortcut like “CTRL+Shift+Print”.
No, this predates having it on either iOS or macOS by a year or two. I still found it more useful because this doesn’t require using images; the vast majority of my usage was when working for a company that had stupid ERP software where much of the data was displayed onscreen but couldn’t be copied.
(This comment is not as facetious as it seems. I knew you could copy text from images, but I just tried to test som limitations, and it’s a weirdly comprehensive feature - I can copy text from photos and/or videos in the screenshots app, the Preview app, the Photos app, QuickTime, and even from YouTube videos in Safari (but not Firefox, interestingly enough) - assuming that means it’s an OS-level thing. Quick search says this rolled out in 2021.)
Problem starts earlier in life. I know someone who is a teacher in lower school. Ask the kids to make a presentation and literally in 90 seconds you will have a PowerPoint with 15 slides full of pictures and embedded video.
Ask them to write one slide of text and they’ll struggle to put three sentences together.
Reason is pretty simple, a lot of the parents never read to their kids. They grew up on iPads. Video is the medium they are accustomed to. And so they struggle with written information.
I have heard from friend that teach in higher end that students are struggling more and more with getting information from text. It seems those students have now found there way into the work force.
bruh i know people in their 40s making 6 figures that couldn’t read an error message if it would save ten generations of their family.
Yeah, one of my most often stated phrases at work is “you can’t make people read.”
Error pops up, explaining exactly what the issue is and how to fix it? Oh god, let me call IT to see what I need to do. Yeah, you can’t make people read.
Some piece of equipment or machinery has changed in some meaningful way? Management is quick to go “just hang a sign on it, letting people know the new process.” Nope, you can’t make people read. People will physically move the sign to the side, try to use the machine like they previously did, and get surprised when it doesn’t work as expected.
Some area is unsafe due to work happening overhead? “Oh just hang signs on the doors, telling people not to come in.” No, you can’t make people read; I have seen people push their way past physical barriers with big “do not enter” signs, just to ask if we’re open. How about we lock the doors, and disable the keyways on all the doors (except one, where we have physical barriers to entry) until the work is completed?
One of my old coworkers from a place I no longer work would come to me for every exception his code threw. Being generous, I understand his intentions, he was curious if they were known problems or things to avoid. That said, every time I asked him what line of code it happened on or if he’d searched online about it the answer was no. I was probably ~25 at the time and had a bachelor’s degree. He was definitely at least 50 and had a PhD.
Savage
Was going to say, very much seems like the opposite of a generational problem. Seems more like everything we’d vaguely define as ‘the tech industry’ has become big enough that it’s workforce now includes the individuals who wouldn’t have been considered competent 10 years ago.
>>> students are struggling more and more with getting information from text >>> found there way >> people [...] that > it's workforceThe question is whether this running gag is intentional.
got to submit those bugreports as tiktok dances
But video is so damn annoying. If you wanna copy-paste something from the video, you’re fucked unless you pause and type each character by hand. I don’t get it.
But then again I’m not a zoomer.
The number of times I’ve seen screencaptures of text on a coding job that makes me think/say “you’re a coder, I’m a coder, you know we’ll need this as text, so what the fuck is wrong with you?” is too many.
Images of text happen way too often everywhere including lemmy. And they grace us without alt text like they’re going out of their way to fuck us & people with accessibility needs especially hard.
The number of times I’ve all but rage-quit a ‘tutorial’ which is simply an open mic with ‘room’ noises and breathing over a video of someone typing things into a screen which is then captured on iPhone, is far too high.
It could be a series of documented steps with reasoning, interspersed with screenshots (themselves in a ‘spoiler’-style show/hide setup, and it would then take up 1/1000th the space, require 1/100th the time, and demonstrate the technique in a way I could go over a few times. The typing is interminably slow, watching for someone who says nothing but mouse-overs (and selects) text as a way of communication is frustrating, and the entire thing is a barrier to comprehension. Is it ADHD that makes it far, far preferable to just get a page I can review and pore over and repeat a few times, or is it just a learning style that isn’t passive?
Probably the learning style. I don’t have ADHD, but I can’t tolerate someone slowly explaining something over a 10 mins video. I know specifically what I need information about, so I need to be in control of the experience. A text tutorial I can skim until I get to the relevant part, but videos usually feel like they’re wasting my time. The only time I prefer videos over text is for DIY instructions where the physical actions are better conveyed in motion.
(Feels related to that I very rarely watch TV or films, and even when I do, I get antsy after half hour of just sitting around staring out of my face. So I tend to watch movies in half-hour sessions, which I often can’t be bothered to pick up again lol, and leave them unfinished for years 🙈 In a nutshell I much prefer video games as a hobby :D)
I have a handy little app on macOS called TextSniper that takes a screenshot of a selected area, then runs OCR on that screenshot and puts the text on the clipboard. It’s perhaps the most useful $10 I’ve ever spent and I’m frankly surprised this doesn’t exist on other systems. A year or two after this was released Apple started letting people copy text directly out of images, so they might do the usual Apple thing of killing it by directly adding it to the OS. There might be something like this on Linux by now but I haven’t heard of it on Windows.
A dev named funinkina has made an application working alongside the KDE screenshot application spectacle. It’s surprisingly lean code which utilizes tesseract and works fantastically. Just compile, ln -s the app to your bin directory and give it a global shortcut like “CTRL+Shift+Print”.
https://github.com/funinkina/spectacle-ocr-screenshot
This has been built in to MacOS for a little while now though?
Microsoft powertoys has this feature for free
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor
Apple has had it built into iOS for a while now; This person likely got scammed out of $10 to “buy” a feature that was already baked into their OS.
No, this predates having it on either iOS or macOS by a year or two. I still found it more useful because this doesn’t require using images; the vast majority of my usage was when working for a company that had stupid ERP software where much of the data was displayed onscreen but couldn’t be copied.
I can also do it on my android phone
I can also do that on my MacBook.
(This comment is not as facetious as it seems. I knew you could copy text from images, but I just tried to test som limitations, and it’s a weirdly comprehensive feature - I can copy text from photos and/or videos in the screenshots app, the Preview app, the Photos app, QuickTime, and even from YouTube videos in Safari (but not Firefox, interestingly enough) - assuming that means it’s an OS-level thing. Quick search says this rolled out in 2021.)
Problem starts earlier in life. I know someone who is a teacher in lower school. Ask the kids to make a presentation and literally in 90 seconds you will have a PowerPoint with 15 slides full of pictures and embedded video. Ask them to write one slide of text and they’ll struggle to put three sentences together.
Reason is pretty simple, a lot of the parents never read to their kids. They grew up on iPads. Video is the medium they are accustomed to. And so they struggle with written information.