This is a piece about how Kids These Days are struggling with astrophysics because the workflows their professors are trying to teach them require interacting with folders in a way they’re not used to.

…rather than in physical spaces. It could also have to do with the other software they’re accustomed to — dominant smartphone apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube all involve pulling content from a vast online sea rather than locating it within a nested hierarchy. “When I want to scroll over to …

This is a weak comparison in my mind, because Instagram and TikTok don’t even have the kind of functional search that allows you to really relate to content in that way; you’re relying on their algorithms to surface what you must have wanted, not able to filter results, order them by various attributes, etc.

…archable system, Plavchan says. The primary issue is that the code researchers write, run at the command line, needs to be told exactly how to access the files it’s working with — it can’t search for those files on its own. Some programming languages have search functions, but they’re difficult to implement and not commonly used. It’s in the programming lessons where STEM professors, across fields, are encountering problems. “They use a computer one way, a…

So… not exactly.

At work, I have tools that set up my relevant directory structures for me for the different projects I work with. I use tools that have their own directory structures in which they present content. My experience of using these tools is almost always approximately equivalent to navigating an app that presents options on multiple screens. With the native tab-complete, cd src<TAB>/Package<TAB>/lib is a bit like clicking through nested menus. At work, it is exceedingly rare that I ever have to indicate the kind of complicated relative paths that require a mental model of location beyond “you’re here, click here, now you’re here, click here…”.

This is not true with my personal projects, because I am lazy and I have not set up tooling that would make things neat and straightforward. Relative paths are common, mental models are necessary, and I’ll admit that when these fail there’s a certain amount of fallback to recursive grep – the unindexed brute-force search of eras past.

Academic programming contexts are kind of uniquely unprofessional, and I don’t like that this is being presented as “there’s nothing we can do, computers are just like this, astrophysics is just like this!” when that’s not really the case. Standard directory structures enforced by tooling change how you relate to the whole thing.

…llege coursework in every case. Guarín-Zapata was taught computer basics in high school — how to save, how to use file folders, how to navigate the terminal — which is knowledge many of hi…

🎶one of these things is not like the others🎶

…kills” in the educational space A cynic could blame generational incompetence. An international 2018 study that measured eighth-graders’ “capacities to use information and computer technologies productively” proclaimed that just 2 percent of Gen Z had achieved the highest “digital native” tier of computer literacy. “Our students are in deep troub…

A cynic determined not to compare to measures of adults’ skills, maybe.

… computer fundamentals as well. Colling’s courses now include a full two-hour lecture to explain directory structure. He likens finding files to givi…

This is nonsense. This is nonsense. I remember despising college courses doing this kind of thing. You think interacting with a file system should be taught in the same way as, I dunno, analyzing factors that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire?

…s it’s hard to tell,” he says. Plavchan agrees that there are limits to how much he can bridge the generational divide. Despite his efforts to tailor his teaching, “some of the tools we use rely on some knowledge that our students just aren’t getting.” Others, meanwhile, believe it’s…

Sometimes the way that academics interact with computers – particularly non-CS academics – is to construct their own peculiar individual mental models of how things should be done, and demand that students absorb them. Maybe you should be figuring out a better standard workflow that your students can “get”!

…ach that’s soon to be obsolete. Plavchan has considered offering a separate course on directory structure — but he’s not sure it’s worth it. “I imagine what’s going to happ…

Please, I’m begging you, talk to a single librarian at your university. Please talk to a single librarian at your university.