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From: Rich <rich@example.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 05:19:26 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> wrote:
> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
> 
>> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>>
>>>> This is the truth. I'm a contrarian kind of guy, so when the world
>>>> goes git, I go fossil. ;) Jokes aside, I like the concept of one
>>>> binary and how it works for my own personal use case.
>>>
>>> I went fossil when I had to teach a class.  I thought git was more
>>> complicated than fossil.  But it turns out that fossil was seen as
>>> crazily complicated by nearly all students (anyway).  I think fossil is
>>> just fine, though I confess I prefer the file system over a database.
>>
>> This is very interesting! What was it that the student thought was crazy
>> complicated compared with git?
> 
> Not compared to git.  They did not get to see git.  They just hated
> fossil to the point of almost giving up on the whole course altogether.
> Very likely they knew that other courses would give them the same
> credits and they could try it afresh on the next semester.
> 
> I don't have much information.  The command line seemed an awful
> experience to them.  I suspect that they thought that the command line
> was archaic means of system interface and that perhaps it was just a
> teacher idiosyncrasy.

For some (most? all?) they likely had only ever used a "touch/feely" 
interface (i.e., phone) and so, yes, they were very ill equiped to even 
comprehend a command line, much less be productive in one.

> This experience gave me the following feeling---they ask for real-world,
> pratical experience, but they're not up to an introduction to the tools
> used in the real-world.

They likely have never been out of their smartphone protected bubble.  

>> I have taught classes with git (basics) and at the end of the day,
>> regardless of if you use git or fossil, it just requires a few simple
>> commands to get started at the basic level (we were not discussing
>> rebasing and huge software projects).
> 
> I think it boils down to a lot more because these are compouter users
> that even ``environment variable'' is a never-seen concept.  I watched
> them opening a c:\> prompt on their Windows system, slowlying typing up
> their very long path to their project, say, and then doing it again on
> the next class---paths with spaces and other complicated symbols.

Which is (almost) the same they would do using a GUI or their phone.  
Wherever the file manager defaults, they then meticiously "step" their 
way over to where they want to be.  The concept of saving a 'bookmark' 
(of sorts) to "go directly there" is likely foreign to them.  In fact, 
they sound like the types who open the google search page, then type a 
URL into the google search box, to go to that URL.