Wednesday, January 9, 2008

learn computer programing with just one phone call

We have probably all heard the stories about people who are profoundly computer-ignorant:
  • the woman who wondered why her computer didn't work during a power outage.
  • the guy who didn't know that his computer had an on/off switch (one of my adult students)
  • the woman who tried to scan a document by waving it over her monitor...
but here is another true account that comes to us first-hand from a programmer (quoted):

Being a programmer and the only computer literate person in my family, I get tech support calls from my family all the time. I got a phone call from a brother-in-law today:

Him: Hey, you're good with computers right?

Me: Yes.

Him: And you know how to program computers?

Me: Yes, thats my job actually.

Him: Could you explain programming please?

Me: I'm sorry, what do you mean?

Him: I want to make a game like Halo, but I don't know how to start. Could you explain what I need to do?

Me: You should probably go to the library and get a book.

Him: Can you just tell me what I need to do?

Me: Wait a minute. Are you asking me to explain how to program computers?

Him: Yeah.

Me: Over the phone?

Him: Yeah.

My brother in law apparently made several unsuccessful attempt to "learn programming" by opening up exes in Notepad. He created a text file with the words "Morph the screen into something cool" and couldn't figure out how to run it, even had the nerve to ask me "how do I install my program? Do I just put a shortcut on the desktop".

Quoted from the Worse Than Failure website
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Could-You-Explain-Programming-Please.aspx

I think that the last paragraph is especially wonderful.

2 comments:

Tre Pryor said...

Ha! That's hilarious. I'm consistently amazed at how lazy and selfish people can be.

Gerry Hatrić said...

I'm a software engineer and get dumb user questions all the time from people who should really know better, but this is superb!! LOL