Terminally Incoherent

Sometimes I wonder why there are so disproportionately few women in my field. What is it about Computer Science that sends most women running for the hills. I think this is a question that should be directed at sociologists more than at CS people, as it seems to be more of a social issue more than anything else.

I can imagine what scares people away from this field in general. There are 3 factors I can think off which make most people think long and hard about deciding on a career in CS. First one is of course the computer geek image which seems to be deeply socialized into every single individual at a very early age. Every cartoon, movie or video game always portrays the computer specialist as a pimpled geek with thick glasses and the canonical pocket protector. Every once in a while you will see a “hacker” in there who is hip, cool and awesome. But Hollywood hackers are always self taught whiz kids who hate the man and do not need some stinking degree from a university.

We always had this image problem - only exception was the brief period of the .com suck when creating static HTML pages was more profitable than selling crack, and having CS degree meant you were supposed to be disgustingly, filthy rich by the age of 25. So while the nerd image was still prevalent, it was sort of upgraded to “rich nerd” which, if you think about it was not that bad.

Right now we are in almost an opposite situation due to outsourcing. Popular opinion is that US based CS graduates cannot compete with their Indian counterparts who allegedly work for shiny baubles. So the new image of a CS graduate is a computer nerd with a pocket protector, flipping burgers at Mickey D’s because his job was shipped overseas.

The third and final strike against CS is the emergence of some sort of faux neo-ludism in the recent years. These days it seems to be fashionable, and in good taste to loudly declare your disdain for these damned computers. I’m always amazed at how many people are literally beaming with pride when they tell me they are computer illiterate. As if it was some sort of badge of honor. They almost want to be praised for their ineptitude and be reassured that their almost criminal ignorance of technology doesn’t really matter because “that’s why we IT guys are here”.

People also often brag about how bad at math and/or spelling they are, but if they produce a report full of typos or mess up the numbers for the last quarter no one will give them a break. This is why people use spellcheckers, calculators and proofread their work. But if someone is “bad with computers” they can royally fuck something up and no one will blame them because everyone knows “Bob is bad with computers”. Young people pick up on this message and see that if you never bother to learn technology no one will ever expect you to do certain things on your own, and will give you special treatment. In fact managers and high ranked official tend to be the most clueless and the most vocal about their lack of skill. So wherever they go they take a throng of IT people who make stuff work for them. This image is also very prevalent in the media and functions almost as the polar opposite of the typical geek image. So while CS people are nerds with no carrier prospects, the truly successful, beautiful and admired individuals tend to be computer clueless.

Put all of these things together, and you can probably see why CS admissions are so low, and are falling each year. Our field just has a really bad rep. We have no street cred so to speak.

What I find interesting is that men are able to shrug off these stigmatic stereotypes much more easily than women. Why is that? All the 3 factors seem to be equally discouraging for both sexes. Maybe some of the female readers could shed some light on this for us. I know there is at least one or two of you out there.

After contemplating this for a little while, I think I have 2 potential answers. For one, CS has been historically a male dominated field. Most of the the big names out there, the most elitist, accomplished and widely renowned researchers of the past were mostly dudes. Therefore talented women are often up against tough and sometimes prejudiced competition in the academia. It is tough to get stuff published in more exclusive and prominent peer reviewed journals, if the reviewers often have preconceived notions about your abilities based on your sex. And let’s face it, old dudes may often have “conservative” world view and “old fashioned” beliefs about women, and the role of kitchen in their daily lives. Some ladies may consider this as a challenge and are invigorated by this potential opposition, while others shy away from this sort of unfair competition. So this is an important factor, but I don’t think it is the only one.

For example, I find it hard to believe that high school would girls decide not to take a computer science course because of the glass ceiling issue in the academic world. After all, male students tend to outnumber females in CS courses even at the earliest levels. So somehow we must be socializing girls to shun computer science at a very early age - perhaps even before they hear about it for the first time in school.

I think part of the issue is the strange double standards we have for little boys and girls. They are encouraged to take part in different activities, to take up different hobbies and play different games. This is why we have a whole bustling industry producing video games targeted mostly at young boys and adolescents. This has started changing in the recent years, especially in the console market. Still, boys are more likely to be more familiar with technology having played, installed and downloaded or even tweaked and modified many games before they ever get a chance to take a technology course in school.

But video games and their target market are only a symptom of this double standard. They only show that these traditional roles and behaviors for boys and girls are deeply ingrained in our psyche. Boys are almost nudged towards technology, and encouraged to tinker, play and explore, while girls are taught restraint and almost nudged away from it.

But this is just a speculation, not based on personal observation and not supported by any concrete data. I’m talking about this, because the real question we have all been asking for years now is: how to get more women interested in Computer Science. What do we have to do? How do we advertise to them? How to we draw them in?

Everyone seems to be talking about modifying the curriculum, or shifting focus away from this or that. But if girls are getting shunted away from technology right from the get go there is not much do. By the time they reach school age, where they can be exposed to computer science many of them can already be pre-programmed to dislike it. Perhaps we should be targeting parents and early childhood education programs instead.

It’s just a thought. What do you think? What is your take on this issue? I’d love to hear what the female readers have to say about this. Feel free to tell me I’m totally wrong ladies!

A lot of people I meet tell me that they are not good with computers/technology when they hear what I do. I often wondered why do they do that. It seems like a silly self deprecation. In this day and age it is kinda shameful thing to say - almost as bad as for example publicly admitting you dropped out of high school. I used to think that not being able to deal with technology was an intellectual or developmental problem - that these people simply had a low IQ and probably also struggled with math, science, and basic logic concepts. I really had a low, opinion about people like that. There were exceptions - for example I didn’t expect certain age groups or professions to have a lot of exposure to computers, and thus didn’t hold it against them. For example my dad never really had to use a computer in his life, so I fully expect him to struggle with it. However some of the young kids who spend their lives on myspace, or professionals whose job revolves around sitting in front of a computer have no excuse.

Over time however I notice that a lot of these people who should not have any excuses are actually fairly bright. Many of them were good students, or diligent professionals considered to be very good at their job. They were able to excel in certain fields, and actually understood basic math and science. I realized that this is not an intellectual problem, but rather an attitude issue. They were unable to deal with technology not because of stupidity, but because they simply didn’t want to deal with it.

The main difference between me and most of my coworkers is that when I encounter a computer issue, I don’t go into a panic mode, but rather try to troubleshoot or work around it. Someone from the peanut gallery will say it’s because of my education, but let me shoot that concept down right away. It’s bullshit. I never had any training in IT. My degrees are in computer science, which, despite popular belief has nothing to do with tech support. When I landed my first tech support job, my only prior experience was actually owning a PC or two. Everything I know about tech support I found on Google. And that’s precisely what I’m getting at - doing rudimentary tech support stuff simply requires essential problem solving and online research skills.

On a daily basis I see very smart people who can go into a random company, dig through cooked books and all kinds of financial shams, uncover fraud and unmask all the shady shenanigans based on numerical discrepancies in the documentation they can get their hands on. These people are great at problem solving - this is what they do! But if they hit a technology issue at some point, all of a sudden they drop everything and turn into bumbling fools who can’t even read the error message from the screen back to me. Why is that?

The difference between us and them seems to be the fact that we have this weird intangible “good with computers” thing going on. I dubbed this trait as “machine empathy” because I believe it is more about understanding technology and being able to relate to it. It’s fairly simple if you think about it. If you want to work with animals you need to learn how to read them, know what they are capable of, and how to interact with them to get desired responses. Same with people - if you want to be a good motivator, or counselor of some sort you need to figure out how people work, and how to push the right buttons.

If you want to work with technology, you need to familiarize yourself with how machines work, and how to interact with them. I believe this is a skill that can be learned over time and through practice - just as the people skills. Only machines are much easier because they do not have mood swings, bad days, pms or just plain old bad attitude. They do not get angry and they do not hold grudges. They are always consistent, and for the most part reliable. It’s really not that difficult to figure out how to approach them, and how to make them cooperate. In comparison handling people (or animals) is much more difficult task.

I believe there are two major factors that contribute to the popper attitude towards technology:

“I’m bad with computers” is a self fulfilling prophecy

The very notion that someone can be bad with technology (or for that matter bad with anything) is deeply ingrained in our culture. But it is such a defeatist, self deprecating approach. If I ever have kids, I will do my best to try to root out this kind of thinking in them as early as possible. The major problem is that if you truly believe you are not good at something you will never actually get better. People simply go “I don’t seem to have the natural inborn talent for this thing, so I’m not even going to bother trying to improve this skill” which is absolute bullshit. While you may not have interest in particular subject, and others may actually be able to progress faster, if you apply yourself, practice and make a real effort you will eventually get better - it is inevitable.

People who consider themselves “bad with computers” simply refuse to learn about their machines. They use this excuse because it is easier to claim one is genetically incapable of learning technology, than it is to actually put some effort into figuring the inns and outs of the machine they use on a daily basis to do their job. Sadly, there is no “technology” gene. No one is born with the knowledge how to operate a computer. Each of us has to learn it at some point. Some people may learn faster than others, but every single human being has the capacity to learn how to use technology properly.

Fear is the mind killer

The second big issue for many people is fear. They are literally afraid to break their computers by doing the wrong thing. Fear is a show stopper - someone who is constantly worried about breaking something will never experiment, and never deviate from a beaten path - and thus will not learn new things. Fear must be extinguished - and the only way to do it, is by facing it head on.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

My attitude is this: so what if it breaks? Hardware can be replaced. Software can be reinstalled. Data can be restored from backup (you remembered to back it up before you started tinkering, didn’t you?). The only way you could actually suffer material or monetary loss is if you hose your hardware, which is very difficult to do if all you are doing is messing around with the software. So really, the worst case scenario is reinstalling the operating system if you really fuck things up. In fact, I know people who change their OS the way some women change hand bags - they get 3 or 4 new ones each season. I can pretty much install Windows and/or Ubuntu in my sleep, so the worst case scenario is really not so bad. As long as you have backups of your data, you are fine. Once you realize that, the fear will go away, and you will be on your way to become the local computer guru.

These are the two show stoppers. Once you remove these roadblocks I believe a person will become much more receptive and attuned to technology - assuming they will make an effort to actually learn something new about it. I refuse to believe that there is a single person on this planet who would be physically or psychologically incapable of developing this sense of machine empathy. It is all about the desire to learn. And once you get it - once you figure out what you can expect from your machine, you can do anything with it. Google is your firend.

Next semester I plan to try tackling these two major show-stopping issues in my class in a much broader way. I’m hoping that if I try to change their attitudes (even slightly) I might be more successful in showing raw knowledge down their throats later on. I probably won’t reach everyone (some people simply refuse to learn anything in college on a principle) but it might be worth to try this.

On Saturday evening I lost power. I do get a lot of brownouts around here, but this was different. It was around 7pm, and all of a sudden I found myself in total darkness. Fortunately I always keep a LED flashlight on my desk. Most times I use it when I crawl under my desk and try to sort things out in the sprawling jungle of unkempt cables down there. But every once in a while it comes in handy during power outage.

It’s interesting, but once the power is gone the different appliances do not shut down at the same time. It is like a strange sequence of events that lasts a split second, but your brain registers it as a set of well defined stages. First the house lights dimmed down. Then the desk lamp made a short buzzing sound and flickered off. The CRT followed with the characteristic”krrrr-ponk” sound echoing deep within the cathode ray tube behind the display. The video output collapsing down to a single line in the middle of the screen then fading into black. The faint wheezing sound of the desktop fans spinning down to an abrupt halt came next. Behind me I could hear the static swish of the TV and cable box dying in unison - a very different sound than that of the dying monitor, and yet the two use the very same technology to display moving pictures on their screens. After that, there was only a def and mute blackness. As if I was thrown into a black void of nothingness. Both the sense of sight and hearing suddenly went into overdrive trying to overcompensate of the sudden loss of abundant stimuli. The only sound I could hear was creaking of my own chair, and my own breathing. Sometimes, the power would come right back. I sat there waiting for few seconds.

One… Two… Three… Was it going to come back?

Five… Six… Seven… I guess not. I fumbled for my flashlight which was standing between an empty soda can a stack of letters and a coffee mug full of old pens and markers.

I climbed up the stairs from my underground lair, through the kitchen into the living room only to be greeted by a distant howling sound. A bit like sirens - maybe it was a passing ambulance, or a police car… But the pitch was wrong. It didn’t oscillate the way emergency signals do. It didn’t move closer or farther away as it’s the case with the a moving vehicle signaling it’s passage. Perhaps these were distant fire sirens? But my town doesn’t have them - we have a professional fire department, not volunteers. Besides, these sirens rise and fall in pitch. The howling sound I heard did not - it was fairly constant. What was it then? It took me a minute or two to identify the sound. It was the wind! A high pitched distant howl, and my house was creaking as the violent gusts sweep over it. I could hear it so well, because of the deathly silence in the house. There was no radio, no TV, no noise from the spinning fans on my desktop. Nothing to down out the sounds of nature.

I peeked outside through the glass deck door. I saw only darkness - as if someone coated the glass with a thick layer of black paint. I could hardly make out the outline of my deck, as my eyes adjusted to the sharp contrasts around me. The bright LED flashlight was wreaking havoc to my night vision. Judging from the absence of light outside I summarized that the whole neighborhood got hit. The nearby houses were just dark silhouettes far beyond the range of my flashlight. Not a single window was lit in any of them. They were like black, cardboard cutouts backdropped against the sky - two dimensional outlines devoid of detail. The only sources of light were glimmering high up above me the night sky. The stars and the moon - they were incredibly clear. Clearer than I have seen them in years. No wonder - suddenly all the reflected light feedback that usually obscures them was gone in the area. Now the only thing trying to obscure them were the naked winter crowns of the trees swaying violently in the wind. Like withered claws of some strange primordial Lovercaftian beast born of darkness, clawing madly at the sky.

I made my way to the front of the house, and peered outside the front door. The streetlights were off, but the headlights of a passing car bathed everything in bleak artificial white. The house across the street was dark as well. In this sudden brightness it’s windows appeared to me as dark gaping voids - bizarre black holes which collapsed upon themselves and opened passages to strange dark dimension. But illusion only lasted for a brief second. As the car passed, the house became a dark shadowy silhouette again. The red tail lights didn’t really give off much light - not enough to see the details of the house across the street. Instead they made the shadows of the trees and streetlights come alive. They seemed to dance and move in the cars wake as some unsettling procession of twirling stick figures. Soon all I could see were two red dots going of into distance, heading for a shiny green beckon!

The traffic lights! They were still on. I watched them turn amber, red, then green again. At least part of the infrastructure had to be working if they were on. If they have power at the intersection, then it shouldn’t take them that long to fix this outage. Perhaps it’s just my street that went down.

I went back inside, chilled to the core by the cold wind and decided to check the view outside the deck door again. This time I saw a faint, shaky flickering in the distance. It was almost like a mysterious swamp light. It would appear for few seconds, in one spot dim down into nothing and flare up somewhere else. My neighbor must have found a flashlight, or a candle at last and I could see it through the windows as he wandered from one room to another.

As I was sweeping the flashlight back and forward over the deck and the garden the shadows were moving eerily following and scattering away from the beam of light. The trees were still clawing at the sky. The whole world seemed to be moving to the tune of some strange music my ears could not hear. An idea about what must have happened started coalescing in my mind. The crazy wind must have downed a tree which in turn damaged a power line. That had to be it. They would just have to find it, and reroute the power. It shouldn’t take that long. Maybe 20-30 minutes tops.

I was watching the shadows scatter in front of the circle of light, only to jump out on the other side, elongate and then join the darkness which has spawned them with a strange sense of fascination. This phantom movement was both mesmerizing and unsettling. The hedges and bushes below the deck and along the fence in the back of the yard were shaking violently in the wind. It was as if there was something that was hiding in them and now decided to stumble out rushing towards the light - or perhaps away from it. On the left side there was no fence at all. On the right, it is only a symbolic waist high chain-link. Only the back of the property is somewhat shielded. Shielded from what? The neighbors? They were all good people. But suddenly it worried me that, someone could come from either direction, waltz straight onto my deck and I would never see them. Not just tonight - on any night. My back yard is never really lit up very well. Anyone could just walk across the lawn unseen almost all the way to to the deck stairs. From there, it would only take five quick steps, and they would be right in my face. And the only thing that protected me from potential intruders was a thin sheet of glass. I felt vulnerable.

I’d have to board it up. That was what popped into my head. If the power never comes back, there would be looting, and the deck door would need to be barricaded to keep people outside and hide the activity in the house.

Why was I thinking about this? Who would come here? This was a small, local power outage and I was in a nice suburban town, which would be the last place on earth you would expect to see the post apocalyptic looting war bands I suddenly imagined. Still, the thought made me uneasy. I made sure the deck door was fastened shut, and was about to shut down the vertical blinds. I figured that not having to look at the gloomy scenery out there will make me feel safer. Ironically, I wouldn’t even be able to see the potential intruders with the blinds shut. But there were no intruders to see around here.

That’s when I saw a shadow darting into the circle of the moving light made by my flashlight. Black as night, elongated and shapless it was moving on it’s own, dancing along the whole length of the deck and moving from left to right until it filled out all available space. This was not the normal shadow dance that I produced by moving the flashlight back and forward. This shadow was attached to something that seemed alive.

The owner of the shadow suddenly appeared right against the glass of the deck. Two charcoal black in black eyes peered at me from the darkness. They were darker than the night, and much deeper than those of a human being. Huge pupils, almost no retina visible - these were the eyes of a nocturnal predator. He looked inside, surveyed the room and finally affixed his gaze upon me crooking his head expectantly. Inquisitive and curious beast - he was hungry. My uneasiness evaporated, and I swung the door open letting him inside. This cat still doesn’t trust me, but he is pretty comfortable eating inside of the house. He has his bowl right by the deck door. Such an odd relationship we have - a man and a wild animal. Domesticating this little guy is an ongoing project, and there is no end in sight yet. This is no lazy house cat - he is proud, individualistic hunter. I suspect he didn’t mind the wind much, and naturally was completely unaffected by the power outage.

I often wondered how he perceives us, humans. He was born out in the suburban wilderness and has never known a human touch. Never lived inside of a house. How strange we must be to him. Awkward towering giants with booming voices, always hoarding food and are curiously willing to share it. What we have is a fragile truce - and he reminds me of it by hissing and baring his fangs as I pass by him to fetch him something to eat. To close for comfort. Sorry pal, didn’t mean to startle you…

As my feline friend was getting his evening meal the family assembled at the kitchen table, speculating about the power outage and fiddling with different battery powered light sources and candles. We sat there for several hours chit-chatting and gathering field reports from friends and relatives in the area. For some time the cell phones were in constant use - calling ringing, connecting. Then it all died down, as we got the low down on everyone’s situation. It seems that the outage affected more than just my town but rather a larger area comprised of 2-3 towns. It seemed serious, but nothing that could not be fixed in few hours. I called the power company, only to get re-routed the automated power outage reporting system every time.

As we sat together the wind dropped off and picked up several times. It’s low pitched howling mixed with actual emergency siren sounds fading in and out from all directions. My brother works at a restaurant 10 minutes away from the house. You cross the bridge, and jump on the highway, make a U turn and you are there. He had power all evening so obviously the damage was local. But sitting in that dark house, and listening to the howling wind, and counting the passing ambulance/police sirens it almost seemed like we were are in some post apocalyptic movie in which the civilization just came crushing but no one has noticed yet.

Around 11pm, I went back downstairs with a big battery powered lamp, and a plastic yellow radio/cassette player we used to take to the beach. I hooked the lamp above my bed, propped the radio on my night stand, and tuned into some music station. Compared to the howling, and creaking I heard upstairs, my room was quiet as some ancient tomb. Initially I wanted to play some mp3’s from the desktop, but naturally this wouldn’t work without electricity - and I don’t have any music on my work laptop. So the radio had to do for the time being. I desperately needed some background noise in this deathly silence. Next to the radio I placed my cell phone which was both my life line to the outside world, and also the only watch I owned that still worked. All of the other time keeping devices in the room, require running power. Next to the cell phone, I placed my trusty LED flashlight. Thus armed I hopped into bed with a book and decided to use this time to catch up on my reading.

It’s funny how even during this blackout I was desperately clinging to technology. My cell phone, the radio, the electric lamp. They were all my crutches. What it this was it, though? What if the power never came back up? What if the world died that night for whatever reason? My cell phone would die unless I found some way to recharge it that didn’t involve plugging it into the power socket. My lamp, my flashlight and my radio would only work as long as I would keep feeding them DD batteries. And then what?

Even worse, was that all of my lives work - everything that I have created, and learned so far would suddenly become irrelevant, and absolutely useless. My MS in Computer Science and sysadmin/software developer background would mean nothing in a world where computers were just a distant memory. I was ill prepared for living in a post apocalyptic world. My professional skill set was narrow and useless - the only useful bits of knowledge would be the stuff I have learned in the science classes. Chemistry would probably be useful if I had to Robinson Crusoe by myself for the rest of my life in the urban jungle. So was math, engineering and biology. But computer science would be all but irrelevant.

I did not really posses any survival skills to speak off - I’d usually just google up just look up stuff like that as needed. I think that if the civilization ended tomorrow, and I was one of the few survivors, one of my priorities would be to loot a library searching for useful urban survival knowledge. But my mind balked at the prospect of searching for knowledge this way. That would be so slow and inefficient - and there would be no guarantees I’d find what I was looking for.

What would I do in this new world? How I would the rest of my life play out? Would I be a drain on my family, and the local society possessing few useful skills? How would I deal with all my hopes, dreams and hobbies being blinked out of existence. How about you? Do you think you would survive in such scenario? Do you think you would be ready?

I must have dozed off with the book, and my dark thoughts about the end of the world. I woke up way past midnight. All the lights in the room were on, and the blaring TV was trying to compete with the radio over who can assault my ears with a louder and harsher cacophony of sounds. I smiled to myself, I switched the radio off, turned the volume down on the TV, shut off the lights and went to check my email. I really needed to finally buy that damn UPS for the desktop.

The other day my dad saw me dog ear my book to save my place, and he made a comment about it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I also sometimes make notes on the margins, and mark interesting quotes and passages in the books that I own. It seems that a lot of people get hung up about these things. No dog earing, no putting an open book face down on the table, no scribbling in the books and etc… And these are not just pet peeves of few bibliophiles - these are quite widely held beliefs.

But why is that? It is just a hard copy! A $5 paperback edition and there is a million of copies just like this one. A book is just a storage medium - it is designed to store information in a human accessible way. The data which it contains is the important and valuable commodity. The paper based container however - is for a lack or a better word disposable. And it comes with a built in bookmark functionality. Why not use it?

In fact I would argue that by adding my notes, scribbles and permanent dog-ear bookmarks I’m actually adding value to my copy. Now it has annotations that will help me find interesting passages, or remind me about the parts that I found worth remembering when I pick up the book second time around. It’s almost like having a time capsule - as you re-read the book that had a profound impact on you, you see what used to be important to you in the past. So the paper medium is not only containing data but also my markup and notes.

So I guess this is just a difference of the point of view. Which one are you? Do you dog ear and scribble in your books, or do you keep them in pristine condition? Are you one of the people who think dog earing is a criminal offense? Let me know. I’d love to hear arguments from both sides - to see how people treat their reading material and why.

I just figured out why my users just can’t learn to save their work every couple of minutes. It’s not really them - it’s the system they are working in. I personally have my fingers trained to automatically hit either Ctrl+S as I type. Actually it’s either that or Ctrl+[:w depending on the editor. Even when I type stuff in a text box on the web - like this very post for example, I still try to save as often as possible. In Wordpress I just use the Save and Continue Editing function every few minutes despite the fact that Firefox should theoretically save my text as part of the session. Also my important documents are usually under some sort of version control but that’s a whole different story.

But then again, let’s look back on what type of things do I type the most. I’m a programmer by trade (and choice, and vocation) so most of the day I write code. And what do you do when you write code? You write 3 lines, save, compile (if needed), run it and check the results. I’m used to saving often because this is the only way I get feedback on how I’m doing.

Next, I write papers and documentation in LaTex which pretty much follows the same routine. Write a paragraph or two, save, compile, preview changes. If I write for an hour without saving, I may make few tiny syntax mistakes (like that time when figure numbers in my whole chapter got screwed up) which may bite me in the ass later on.

Finally, I write here, in a tiny text box with shorter posts or in vim for the longer ones. I don’t use the fancy WYSIWYG editor because frankly these things irritate me. So I usually mark up my text using HTML whenever I insert images, format embed code samples or just want to emphasize some words. And once again the only way I can get good feedback on what I’m doing is to stop, save and look back.

I’m essentially forced to save often and as a result I have never really lost any work due to some unexpected crash, brownout or just accidental closing of the program window. Or at least nothing that could not be re-created within 5-10 minutes.

On the other hand, I have witnessed people losing 6-8 hours of work because it never occurred to them they should save the document. It actually kindoff makes sense now. They get instant feedback on their work, and Office and similar programs will let them do stuff like print preview without the need to save. The WYSIWYG mode actually promotes this kind of reckless behavior. This is of course no excuse for stupidity. They should know better than this. But sometimes habits override the reasonable thought. Perhaps this is why I always save like a maniac, and my co-workers avoid that save button as if it was actually causing them physical discomfort to press it. The years of use of Word and Excel simply taught them that saving is just something that you do when you are finished with your document.

In fact, I hit that wall every time when I teach Access which forces you to create a database file before you start working. Most students just click through the dialog and create the file in the default spot (usually either My Documents or Temp). Then at the end of the lab session they go into panic mode because they don’t know where the file is and the Save As option doesn’t work the way they would expect it to.

Breaking habits is hard - especially the bad ones. This actually gives me some hope for humanity. Perhaps all these people are not to stupid to live, but just unfortunate products of their environment. Perhaps I should cut them some slack. In fact, perhaps I shouldn’t really feel bad for them when they loose their work. I should be happy for them - this sort of thing is a formative experience. After they lose a days worth of work 3 or 4 times in a row they might actually get paranoid and start saving every few sentences. And that’s precisely what a normal, well adjusted person should do.