What most people dont get:
Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18
For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to (remember the years before dot com bubble, saying: "I will be down in the basement at the computer to surf on the net little bit" ? :-)
But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens!
Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt.
Personally, a service which is "only an app" will be not used by me as I prefer to have a larger screen with more information (actually I use my mobile phone only when Im in public transport or similar, at home I have a notebook laying around if I need something)
> But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens!
I saw a tweet recently that perfectly encapsulates this: for most people over 30, certain things are "big screen tasks". I use my phone for a lot, but for some things I put the phone down and use my computer instead. I am most comfortable using a large screen and a keyboard for anything that requires writing more than a few words or using any interface for more than a few clicks.
For example, I read your comment on my phone and went to my computer to type this reply.
I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.
Honestly I think Apple perfectly captured it with their "what's a computer?" ad for the iPad. I seem to remember them getting some flak online for it but I think they were right on the money with regards to the younger generations.
> I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.
First hand from a couple of ~16 year olds I know. Definitely not a representative sample. Some know how to type at an acceptable speed. They're awful at shortcuts (alt-tab, many of the browser shortcuts that also present in many other programs (ctrl-w,-t,-s,-q) and most text-selection and movement shortcuts (ctrl-a,-x,-c,-v and (ctrl-)shift-left,-right)) so they navigate clumsily compared to us. They feel awkward when performing simple tasks but they do it faster than on a smartphone. They don't understand some of the terms and abstractions, likely because the smartphones keep that away from them.
Seeing them navigate things like homework or spreadsheets or multiple tabs in a browser from a smartphone is like watching a caveman trying to use a piece of brittle rock as a hammer. It will work in the end, but it's slow. I haven't looked at them closely enough, but I doubt they can comfortably keep more than 10 tabs open and navigate between them with the same speed as on a laptop or a desktop. I assume their browsing habits are qualitatively different than ours because of that. You can't really do adequate research on a smartphone.
> I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.
For college aged kids, most people are definitely not doing their homework on their phone. Many are still using paper and pencil. The one person I know who did do their homework on their phone tried to evangelize it to their friends and got ridiculed for it.
I just asked my college aged kid. He said pretty much everyone does their written homework on their laptop, but many will use their phones to do the reading.
Aside from being a bit small and having to be held close, phones are good proportions for reading. Computers screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs bigger and bigger, and it eats into reading space pretty heavily. Especially if you don't have a high-density screen.
> Computers screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs bigger and bigger
Sadly, most websites forcefully limit the width of the text. It's like they pretend our monitors are oriented to be tall rather than wide. Even HN has unnecessarily big margins. So unless I try to cram another window in my FHD monitor, I have ~50% or more completely wasted space. Margins should be 2-3 pixels wide, not 20-30% of the screen.
There are actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability
The major difference is that in the era of print, it was pretty logical where a multicolumn wide layout could go like on a newspaper, but in an desktop experience the browser markup is theoretically endless.
I can resize my window easily if I wanted shorter text. Or used ctrl-shift-m on Firefox. But I can't easily make the text longer without userscripts or addons.
> actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read
That may apply to most people, but not to everyone.
afaict it applies to literally everyone. there's a variable "sweet spot" of course, but once you get out to "extremely wide" it's reliably worse for everyone, and there are LOADS of computer monitors that qualify for that label.
margins to control the width of large blocks of text have a ton of research in their favor, it's not just "more whitespace = more gooder" UI design madness. there's some of that of course, but there's a sane core underneath it all.
Solution: rotate your monitor 90 degrees, and inform your OS that you have done so. Now your monitor is 1080x1920. You'll actually be amazed how much more of a document fits on screen without sacrificing readability.
In addition to more space, having only one foreground application really reduces distractions and visual clutter. Also, for some reason I am comfortable using larger fonts on phones and tablets, which makes doing lots of reading easier than on my laptop.
> reduces distractions
Have you looked over the shoulder of somebody trying to "do" something on their phone recently?
If so you might have noticed the constant pings and notifications from dating apps, news sites, random games and cool-apps-that-you've-long-forgotten-but-still-have-location-and-background-services-turned-on.
That's where Reduce Interruptions on the iPhone (or Do Not Disturb) comes in handy.
That's not just interruptions. It's the notifications bar itself.
I noticed this only recently - I switched the default phone launcher to a scifi theme built on Total Launcher (there's legit personal research project reasons behind that, it's not just to look cool!) and after few days (and a bunch of missed messages), I realized my life seems suspiciously light in interruptions and random events. It took me a few more moments to pin-point the reason: the theme hid the notification bar entirely. It was still there, ready to pull down and expand with a gesture or a button tap - but that top line with icons was not visible (and through the stroke of luck, I misconfigured something in another experiment and had no notification indicators on the lock screen, either).
Not having notification indicators visible on any surface is really all it took - and conversely, this means that just having them there created the majority of the burden for me. I thought I successfully solved the distraction problem by silencing or eliminating ads and useless notifications, but now I know that even the important ones aren't really that important for the burden their very existence creates.
Android modes provide control over notification display.
Modes control which people and apps can trigger a sound/vibration, but also offer the option to hide the silenced notifications from the status bar, pull-down shade, and dots on app icons. I hide them from the status bar, but not the pull-down shade so that I can manually check if I want to, but don't see them at a glance.
I'm not a heavy user of this feature though; I mostly don't install apps that have spammy notifications.
Right. I'm saying that living for a week without any notification bar at all made me realize that even my usual well-curated notification bar is impacting me much more than I realized.
I imagine usage patterns vary greatly. For me, most of the time, I have it set to only allow messages from contacts, and I usually handle those immediately.
I mean, some, sure. but it's a choice, and not all choose to do that. and I've watched quite a few (of all ages) escape it when they realize how much it's harming their ability to do what they need to do.
This is the first time I've heard someone say a smartphone reduces distractions.
As a millennial boomer, I prefer my triple monitor setup and mechanical keyboard, not to mention network- and client-level content blockers, whenever I have to input more than a sentence.
I was at a conference last week, and I took notes in a fullscreened GNU Nano. Distractions, ADHD, etc. Did get some odd looks, but I couldn't imagine taking notes without an actual keyboard. I'm not an ultra fast typer, but I'm decent - I'd challenge any thumb typer on MonkeyType.
I don't have any social apps or games on my phone. Other than the web browser there's nothing to distract me. I find it so easy to get caught up in checking the news or email or the episode of that show I was watching on my laptop, but I don't do any of those things habitually on my phone or tablet or reader so that's my "distraction free" device.
That's only for reading though! For taking notes I go with a real keyboard or pencil and paper whenever I have the choice.
similar here, I'm gradually removing more and more things from my phone. at this point it's mostly just a couple actually-important apps, a web browser, and messaging apps (because it's clearly superior to whipping out a laptop for brief things). "social" outside messaging is in the web browser or not on the phone at all. if I want to focus I just turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour.
browsing is slowly reducing as time goes on too, as while it's convenient on my phone, it's rarely efficient. it doesn't take long at all before I'd rather pull out a laptop and finish more quickly.
Can't confirm. We had students at university (18-20-ish) that had not used a mouse prior to our courses. That was at least 3-4 years ago now and not a single case.
I started college 10 years ago and all of my homework was computer based, including Calculus and Linear Algebra. Of course for those higher level math classes I had to use paper and pencil to get to the answer but absolutely everything was submitted through an online portal. For any other classes the work was purely done on the computer.
Kinda stretching the definition of kid there, a little past the breaking point imo.
What do you mean? A kid is anyone younger than the speaker. My step dad used to refer to Bill Clinton as a kid because he was the first president younger than him.
Fun fact: dail003's stepdad wouldn't have been able to call any president a "kid" for over a decade now.
> or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.
On the other hand, I've noticed lots of people use voice on their phone instead of a keyboard.
Many friends of mine send occasional nonsense in the middle of a text message, and it becomes obvious they're using voice to text.
As a young kid, why would I laboriously type a homework paper when I could dictate it from the couch or some other better location than a desk?
> Many friends of mine send occasional nonsense in the middle of a text message, and it becomes obvious they're using voice to text.
I do that, but only sometimes, because of those dictation mistakes. If not for that, I'd use it a lot, because it's super convenient way to communicate or operate the phone on the go, while pushing a stroller, holding your other kid's hand in your other hand, holding an umbrella in the third hand, and a bag of groceries in fourth.
What I don't do, and hate with burning passion, is voice messages. I get the appeal for the sender, but excepting kids/teenagers, it's about the most annoying thing you can do for the recipient. There's hardly a moment in a busy adult's life where you can listen to someone's rambling without disrupting people around you and/or discomforting yourself and/or having to expend 100x the focus that reading takes.
For me, voice messages over 5 seconds long go straight to "Share" -> save to file [Ghost Commander] -> attach to a prompt saying "transcribe that for me" [any LLM app] - and I'm working on automating this away completely.
I think it's easier for kids to get hold of a phone at a younger age and become accustomed to it, and don't realise the jank / frustration it introduces when doing certain tasks.
I become unreasonably frustrated when having to search for things on the phone. Buying stuff online is a 'big screen task' not because of the security aspect, but because of needing to compare multiple products, which involve jumping between tabs. I can do that via shift/ctrl-tab, clicking, alt-tab etc - basically a single click. On the phone it's at least 3, and a genuinely grating experience saying nothing of having to copy and paste text for searching.
That said I've come across people that don't know basic copy and paste shortcuts / basic PC literacy, so for those I can see how the phone would feel no less efficient.
I think as kids get older, and their tasks require more digital complexity to complete, they'll slowly migrate towards laptops and larger screen devices (maybe including tablets, maybe not). Basic surfing etc is fine, but there is no way I want to be using even a spreadsheet on a phone - it's a miserable experience - saying nothing of something with genuine complexity like Blender.
I was somewhat shocked a while back when a coworker told me that they offered their kid a laptop for school work and the kid apparently said : Thanks but I’ll stick with my phone.
I was probably one of the first people doing some of these "big screen tasks" on my phone nearly two decades ago when I was a teenager who spent his first earned money to get an Openmoko Neo Freerunner - I learned a lot by programming the phone on the phone itself - but what was exciting about it was that I could do all these things even when I did not have a big screen and a keyboard in front of me. When I do, it's just so much more comfortable to do it there, especially these days when touch screens are capacitive and not very accurate anymore!
It is also the case that PCs are still more expensive than phones. Had a work colleague in one of my first customer facing service jobs who relied almost completely on an android phone to get everything done from mortgage applications to entertainment before I gifted them one of my lesser used laptops.
high end phones are 1k, you can buy a used thinkpad for 200$ or a chromebook for 500$ or now the macbook neo for 600$. Well it's also that the phone you need it so the laptop/pc it's an aditional cost
> I saw a tweet recently that perfectly encapsulates this: for most people over 30, certain things are "big screen tasks". I use my phone for a lot, but for some things I put the phone down and use my computer instead. I am most comfortable using a large screen and a keyboard for anything that requires writing more than a few words or using any interface for more than a few clicks.
Yup. From the frontier of mobile tech, I can say that a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) is the first mobile device that successfully ate into this category, and bit a rather substantial chunks out of it. It's only been ~6 months into this experience, but the "big tasks" for me now are the ones that benefit from substantial use of keyboard and/or mouse. If it's only about screen space or doing things in 2-3 apps at the time, chances are my phone is now good enough for its mobility to beat inconvenience - though chances are also good that at least one of the programs will be a browser, because mobile apps still suck.
It's because of limited RAM that this distinction started.
On especially older phones if I were to write a long comment and move to a different tab or app before submitting, I can all but guarantee the OS would kill and try reloading the tab and lose all my text. What's even worse is this could happen mid online purchase which can have even greater consequences (double booking or purchasing especially but things like flight tickets). People who grew up with older phones saw this happen all too often and moved to a desktop or laptop computer where that literally never happens, at least by default.
This, I'd bet, is the primary reason for big vs small screen activities, although of course there are many secondary ones, such as the phone being many kids' primary interface
This still happens on Android phones with enough RAM, it drives me insane and Firefox is especially bad for this since it will literally always reload the current tab when moving back to it. Phone software is just horrible all around. Multi-tasking simply does not work on phones.
I’ve been trying a bit of an experiment on my current trip and I’m still skeptical about iPad plus Magic Keyboard. Better than alternatives but still so-so. I think I’ll go back to my 10+ year old MacBook Pro but unless something really changes I’ll just pick up an Air for traveling at some point.
I switched to using my iPad Pro M5 + Magic Keyboard nearly full time. I use it for literally everything and also have it connected to an external monitor.
The only asterisk is that I also own a Mac Mini but I keep it attached running headlessly to my router and access it from the iPad via Jump Desktop and only use it exclusively for dev work (I only use a single external monitor anyway even with a normal Mac) or if I really need Chrome occasionally. But macOS used in that way feels almost native to the iPad.
Prior to this I was looking at an MBP and selling the iPad but this has convinced me to stay with it for the time being and maybe just upgrade the mac mini to a studio instead and continue to use it remotely.
People hate on it but so far I've been using it this way and it really feels next gen to the point that using a Macbook with macOS vs. the iPP + iPadOS feels genuinely archaic. With the latest iPadOS beta too things have gotten better on the Safari from as well and tabs no longer refresh as aggressively (though it's not perfect still).
Not to mention the significantly higher amount of security with iPadOS and AppleCare benefits (specifically theft protection) that comes with this setup.
If Android desktop mode improves a bit more and the Motorola devices for GOS next year look good then it wouldn't be inconceivable that I could drop my devices from 3 to 2 and not need a proper PC or Mac at all.
For many kids, they have one device and it’s a phone or tablet. They may have access to a computer, but not on demand. Much like when many of us were growing up and had one computer.
This resonates. There are certain tasks, like dealing with any government or healthcare-related web page, that I won't even bother attempting on my phone. In my case, it's because I just know in my heart of hearts that the crummy mobile website won't be feature-complete enough for me to complete my goal.
My wife is the opposite. It doesn't occur to her that the problem may be with the janky website, not with her. She'll ask me for help with a thing out of frustration and my first troubleshooting step is to reach for my laptop. This is almost inevitably followed by "hey, wait, how come you're able to press the Submit button but I wasn't able to?" "Because the dev never tested this on a phone and it's broken." "So it's not just me being incompetent to use this website?" "Nope, never was."
> For example, I read your comment on my phone and went to my computer to type this reply.
Thanks for the honor! :)
Sometimes I even copy links from here and send them by mail to myself so I can reply later - maybe Im getting tooo old? :-D (on the iPhone I would store it in a simple textnote)
This isn't phone vs desktop. It's app vs browser. To wit, there's no official HN app. I'm presuming you did both of these tasks in a browser.
To this day, using soft keyboards + autocorrect boils my blood. Q: Are we not men?
> For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to
Yes! My zoomer girlfriend tuned her phone to be work ready. Unless she has to, she'd be working on the phone. I would never do that. To me the phone is uncomfortable. To her, it's the small, comfortable thing she knows better than the computer.
This hit the nail on the head.
I find much of the HN community insightful and interesting, but in terms of consumer feedback (especially in a B2C environment) I wouldn't touch feedback here with a 10-foot pole.
I don't mean that to be an insult, quite the opposite. Most people here are power users. But that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts with the internet.
"Why do I need to download a 100+ MB app, give it permission to track my location, and let it run background processes just to browse through a restaurant menu, buy a ticket, or scroll through a list of posts?"
-------------------
Hardware/software companies have, historically, targeted power users because regular users listen to them. The companies producing these apps do so because they can benefit from exploiting the data of regular users, but risk little blowback from power users if they keep their web versions up to date and in good shape.
That doesn't mean power users should ignore the presence of these apps however. We should be telling regular users to avoid them for their own safety. We should also be worried that, if we stay quiet and let regular users flock to apps, the motivation to maintain web access will be eroded. When all power users vanish into a single percentage point and a platform achieves total dominance over the alternatives, companies might well choose to focus on only apps.
This cuts to the heart of it for me. I will not install Meta or LinkedIn apps on my phone because they have been found to be very intrusive.
> that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts with the internet
Exactly! Esp if you just move away "one tile" from tech/IT or business-power-users, most people are more or less clueless what they are doing/have to do with a computer.
Yes, we are in a bubble here - as with every niche/special interest topic: It would be same for me if I would join a "car tuning event" or similar - Im just a car user, and I do not know of all these details and nuts & bolts
> Exactly! Esp if you just move away "one tile" from tech/IT or business-power-users, most people are more or less clueless what they are doing/have to do with a computer.
I don't think so. A majority don't want to. But they are forced by geeks/nerds. Geeks/nerds often show off especially in family/friends parties with older/common folk - telling - I can do this/that. Then average CEO or parent is forced to get a smartphone.
Next the geek/nerd - has no time to maintain the computer/laptop of the parent. Or loses patience explaining updates/double-click/avoid scammer installing software. Then - boom - geek son/daughter - if smart gets a decent pixel/iphone - otherwise gets a shitty Android device - installs everything there. Moves on.
And finally remember it is the young same geek/nerd that will eventually do programming for FAANG/palantir etc. which forces people to install apps, degrade privacy, worsen webapp/websites - all for money.
I think this is missing that older people are not stupid, and they could learn how to use software if they spent the time. Many older folks used even more complicated software in the past, and then they lost the skill or didn't keep it up to date.
A lot of older people rely on yougins for tech support not because they have to, but because it's easy learned helplessness.
A large part of this is ALSO software's fault, though. Software changes too quick and for no reason. Software these days lies to users, erroding confidence.
Very fair point, as an experienced B2B guy myself whenever someone ask me advice about B2C in like “I have no idea”. Been doing this for 25 years but B2C especially today geared towards younger audience is impossible to related for me. I assume majority of the demographics of HN similar
Wait, you mean typical consumers _don’t_ want to build my terminal-based TUI app from source?
Evergreen: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1atqusj/ne...
> Most people here are power users.
As an actual power user, I take exception to this comment.
Most people here are NOT power users. I've lost count of how many arguments I've seen for example where someone Just Can't Believe anyone would have a good reason to have more than 5-10 browser tabs open at a time. Meanwhile I've got a list of thousands and growing.
Or look at the dogged adherence to Windows even to this day after decades of Microsoft abuse, and long spiels about the difficulty and complexity of the Linux command line. Especially when it comes to systemd for example, where one of the most common complaints against sysv is "eww, shell scripts? yuck!"
I don't call these people power users, or recognize them as peers in the realm of technology. The difference between them and me is like the difference between them and the commoner who knows nothing at all about tech.
Maybe we need a geek ranking system or something.
Honest question do you really use all of those tabs? As a small handful of tabs user I use the bookmark feature to hold things I want to keep for later. ctrl-d and it is in the list. Even then 99% of the time I open it again and go 'why did I keep this'. I get it that it is your workflow. Just sort of curious why you would consider that a 'power user' thing? Would not saving them to the bookmark list be more of 'power user' sort of thing to do?
I don't know why, but equating how many tabs a person has open to how much of a power user they are sounds like something right out of a south park episode.
Apparently bookmarks and self-hosting a read it later web app on my home server but only having 5 tabs open at a time makes me a filthy casual.
I think you failed to correctly apply DeMorgan's laws to the statement you're reacting to.
The whole bookmark/tab system really needs to be completely revised. I have a new system I'm thinking about for my Chromium fork which will be radically different. More like a full-page "new tab" screen where everything can be visualized and sorted into different projects etc.
Just look at how most people do a search, for instance. These days for me it often involves 20-30 tabs, or even more, due to the horrific state of internet search. Many results have to be explored, many links from those results also explored, more searches done to narrow in on the precise keyword needed to bring up some hopefully good results, etc. And I can't close all that until the answer is found, as I may need to backtrack, so they just pile up. It's really quite ridiculous how much work it takes to find a good answer these days.
Compare with the typical person who just does one search with some suboptimal keywords then clicks on the first link, or starts dutifully absorbing the AI-generated garbage. Orders of magnitude difference.
I have dozens of projects I'm actively working on just for my Linux distro. Dozens of tabs open for things like X11 window management, for instance, or some info on C++ modules for another project. Lots of tabs open for a hardware project. All kinds of balls are up in the air here. Why put any of this stuff in bookmarks which is a waste of time and energy to manage, when I can just leave it in the tab list, organized in multiple windows spread across different desktops? (I have 64 desktops on my 55" plasma display.)
(lol @ the other guy's reply. That didn't age well.)
hey, light power user here - for a while I was using tabXpert browser extension for this, but they have recently changed to paid-only and I havent had a chance to check out their competition but might end up just buying it anyway
it groups sessions, not just tabs, so i can (for example) have all my banking websites together as a session that i can open and close as a window of tabs. the convenience is it organizes the sessions as named things that i can manage in a UI. transfer tabs from one session to another, close tabs, check tabs that have been closed in that session, etc.
if you know of any tools like this or an easy way to manage it independently without a 3rd party browser extension, I would be interested. Sounds like maybe you are doing something similar but at the desktop level, creating a new desktop to pick up and put down? are they savable and transferable between devices? I like to close everything down at night to run some games with friends, and am going to be building a new comp soon and for various reasons starting fresh with software and importing things as i need them rather than flashing my current setup forward to the new hardware
I've never explored 20-30 search results. Not since Google anyway. If I don't find what I want in the first few I rephrase the search or try a different search engine. The world beyond the first page of results basically doesn't exist.
I agree with this a lot tbh. I think we need to have better support for tiling or something iframe-like in web interfaces. Probably for deep research or focused work, we need something more tree-shaped than the flat tabs-with-back-button structure web browsers expose.
This guy thinks he's a power user because he doesn't know how to close tabs.
Measuring tech skill by how many tabs you have open is like measuring carpentry skill by how disorganized your workshop is.
It's a bit insulting to assume that having more than a dozen tabs open must be "disorganized", especially in a context where it is likely that the power user in question is using browser extensions. Something like TreeStyleTab makes it easy to keep hundreds of tabs organized with clear, easily-manipulated structure, and lower friction than manually creating and curating bookmarks.
It looks like you're either showing off your own ignorance of tools that enable workflows you can't imagine, or you're assuming that everyone's organization methods must resemble your own habits.
[dead]
> Or look at the dogged adherence to Windows even to this day after decades of Microsoft abuse
Or the people who absolutely refuse to give up Chrome, despite the whole adblock situation. "But I don't like the way Firefox tabs look!"
> Or the people who absolutely refuse to give up Chrome, despite the whole adblock situation. "But I don't like the way Firefox tabs look!"
Or have yourself a learning moment and recognize that how things look matters to a lot of people. And It’s not wrong that they value it differently than you.
what's wrong with Cromite or Ultimatum on Android or Vivaldi on desktop? FF is both on desktop and mobile inferior product with devs hating their own users
This. I posted this on my other comment, but there's a meme that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0].
There seems to be a disconnect between some developers and the younger folks.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526
That's not new.
I read a UI book in the early 2000s that cited research showing that most users didn't understand filesystems. They would seem to, but then the idea that the same filename in two places was two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block. Those who got it, didn't find it hard. It's just that some people can't get it.
The disconnect is not between some developers, and the younger folks. It is between some developers, and most of the world.
I think a lot more people than most HN readers realize simply struggle significantly with abstract thinking and reasoning.
It's natural that people who enjoy programming and hacking and related fields are very comfortable with such abstract types of thought. But I really think that isn't all that common amongst most people. I think the average person has to learn such thinking abilities with difficulty (though they can). I'm sure many people here got into programming precisely because abstract thinking came easily to them.
> the idea that the same filename in two places was two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block.
Which is actually why the "files and folders" metaphor is apt. In a filing cabinet in a school office (once upon a time) there were likely hundreds of documents labeled "Report Card" in many different folders, each labeled with a different name.
> I'm sure many people here got into programming precisely because abstract thinking came easily to them.
Counter here: When I wanted to switch from TurboPascal during school (14y/15y) to C++ (because it was "more cool" and that was the tool that the 'big boy' game-dev-pros were, we thought), it was so damn hard for me - really! I was struggling so massivly, I head massive problems with this pointer stuff - it took me years to fully understand it.
And I was hell-bad at math in school (or maybe just too lazy), the only thing to which I a relation was all this geometric stuff (because this was needed for .. game dev! :-D )
Pointers are famously difficult to learn and reason about even though the basic principles are simple. Programming in a style that requires direct manipulation of pointers when it's not actually necessary is usually regarded as unwise because it's so hard to get right.
OP had no problem with pointers prior to trying C++. I think there is a case to be made that C(++) makes pointers unnecessarily confusing and there is no real disconnect between understanding pointers in theory and in practice otherwise
And C++ makes everything extra confusing with the capability of operator overloading.
That has to be one of the worst features ever added to a language.
> I head massive problems with this pointer stuff
no, OP explicitly had problem after getting introduced to pointer concept
Pointers aren't hard, it's C/C++ that make them complicated. Addresses and indirection in any assembly language are simple and straightforward, easy and even intuitive once you start actually writing programs.
Tell that to the thousands of comp sci students who drop out every year because they don't like programming in C!
...thats the reason why I love managed environments like C#/Java/etc :-))
> Which is actually why the "files and folders" metaphor is apt.
It's a starting point, but I certainly wouldn't say it's the best metaphor that there could be. The idea of subfolders just doesn't make sense in a filing cabinet analogy, because you have to consider paper size - any folder which could fit into another folder is not going to be able to contain your regularly sized documents.
That said, I can't think of a better metaphor.
People understand hierarchy. That named file is in a folder in a particular drawer of a particular cabinet in a particular room of a particular building in a particular neighborhood in a...
What some people struggle with is recursive hierarchy where each step doesn't change the kind of container. I guess they never saw a Matryoshka doll when they were little.
> The idea of subfolders just doesn't make sense in a filing cabinet analogy,
Sure it does. The document is located in Building C, Sub-basement 2, Room 123, cabinet 415, folder labeled "Accounts". And a physical folder can certainly contain other folders. Nit-picking the analogy wastes everyone's time.
A better metaphor would be trees and branches. Which is already somewhat used for computing.
I can't blame them. We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11 at work and that OS and its apps do their upmost to obscure where files are located.
I've frequently saved on OneDrive instead of locally, by accident, and then been perplexed when I try to reopen the file later.
And I've been using filesystems for 35+ years, so I feel sympathy for those who don't understand the abstraction. At this point Android is more transparent about its files.
> We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11 at work and that OS and its apps do their upmost to obscure where files are located.
That's because there's research that users don't understand filesystems. So then stupid companies who make bad decisions like Microsoft and Apple decide that that means they should pretend filesystems don't exist.
Did they also struggle to understand that some people have the same name yet are not the same person?
By that logic, operating system developers struggle to understand that putting two files with the same name into the same folder(1) is very much possible in the physical world.
(1) or referencing them from the same directory, which was the earlier metaphor.
Hardly. That would be analogous to two people having the same name _and_ the same spacetime coordinates; they would indeed be the same person.
I've seen two people with the same name and birthday, in different departments of the same building. Caused regular problems with management and HR.
I've also seen two different customers with the same name and phone number - the number got recycled and went to second one while the first hadn't updated their number on file. We had to tell them apart by address.
But why are filenames equated with spacetime coordinates? That doesn't make any sense - reflect on why you leaped to that analogy. The spacetime coordinates are the disk ID and sector number. We've been using operating systems that work a certain way for so long that we think filenames are like spacetime coordinates.
You cannot name 2 of your children the same names.
In the time it took you to write this comment, you've thought more about the abstraction than most of the people who are confused by it -- and it will never succeed to coax them out of their confusion with such logic. :)
I think that's perfectly understandable. File systems require the user to remember a hierarchy in their head (even if there are tools like breadcrumbs to help you out), and many people aren't willing or aren't able to hold an arbitrarily complex structure like that in their head. A name is a flat piece of information, no extra structure to imagine.
I worked with a professor one time that used floppies for all his files (after they had been surpassed by thumbdrives) because each floppy was essentially a single folder, and he could wrap his head around that conceptually.
it's not complicated at all, it's how operating systems present them to the users.
> two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block
Because in the analog world, each "document has usually a single/unique headline" and file names are often perceived as some type of unique identifier as well, Id guess?
> It is between some developers, and most of the world.
sigh
I can say for certain this is true. People my age look at me like I have 3 heads if I ask them to do anything more complex than open a web browser
I'm in India, people give me same looks when I ask them to open browser.
Internet to my parents and other old folks is YouTube and WhatsApp
Famously, there were surveys where people said they used Facebook, but didn't use the internet...
https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...
not even the older generations. My parents save files on the Whatsapp chat, and my father is one who bought the first IBM PC when it came out, so someone who has touched these things for decades (tho very superficially).
I think that the software industry, especially operating systems, have completely failed to provide a balanced product between the overly bloated and messed up (Windows), the overly complicated (Linux) and the overly simplified (Android/iOS).
Maybe some Linux distros are now at the right spot, I was positively surprised by PopOS to give an example, but it's too late. With AI this is only going to get worse.
> My parents save files on the Whatsapp chat
That's becoming dangerously true of my wife and I as well, to be honest.
The friction is just so much lower than Google Drive or whatever. As long as I handle it right away. It's just finding something from more than an hour ago that's intolerable.
I met a business partner who is doing some work for SME retail investors last week for lunch:
He showed me his WhatsApp: People are sending _ALL_ type of critical documents by WhatsApp to him. Everything. (and bank statements are among the class of "less critical" documents in his case)
My theory here is: "If you have any function in your product, people will use it for anything appropriate to them in a given minute"
To be fair, what other simple way is there to send a document to a contact through an e2ee channel? Mail + PGP/GPG? Wormhole?? openssl???
Sending it via WhatsApp (which also has desktop clients, btw) strikes me as a perfectly reasonable solution. (Which is somewhat of an indictment of the current state of cryptographic software, but that's a different topic.)
Whatsapp "claims" to be e2e, but nobody knows for sure since its sources are closed.
Still more secure than non encrypted email yet a lot of people still use email to send fairly sensitive data.
This exact scenario happened with me in a prior job. Invoices, payments, everything could (and sometimes was) sent through WhatsApp. It was absolutely shocking to see people do this.
Some European governments are effectively run via WhatsApp.
maybe China is right: one app to rule them all
I witnessed a cop attempting to manipulate some files I provided to him on a thumb drive. It was a slow laborious process of dragging files one at a time from the Windows image viewer to shared folder. I would have liked to just do a Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, but that was way above his level of thinking and he didn't seem like the type who wanted an education. So I just sat there through the long, painful process--and then at the end he completely screwed up the report. Idiot.
No. There is a disconnect between domain insiders and those that are not. This is not specific to any one domain. It's also not about age.
Some insiders know about this disconnect and fewer still can bridge it easily.
Those that cannot even sense this disconnect, they're a bit of a pain in certain situations. You know, like talking to project stakeholders or customers.
Except pretty much the entire millennial generation knows about computer folders and files, as that was necessary information for graduating school.
Filesystems aren't some universal truth. They were invented at a specific moment in time for specific reasons.
(17 yo here), I think that I am eternally grateful to my cousins who convinced my parents to give me a desktop computer which is still working right now (it had a minor hiccup in the processor recently but it works), before that, I was having a 1 gb crt monitor win7 on which I somehow ran Vscode smoothly.
I am very frugal (to save money on webcam, in online classes, I had droidcam /wo-mic setup with one of my parents old phones that were so old that online classes couldn't work or were just too slow) but spending money on a decent personal computer is genuinely one of the best investments personally.
One thing my cousins did which I am sorta grateful in retrospect is they didn't buy me a gpu so my computer was really nice/smooth in everything but gaming, I still ran some games like portal series , inscryption and many other games like valorant and it was playing valorant when I started realizing its chinese company roots and kernel level access meaning that there was no proper way to guarantee to have piece of mind unless I reinstall it
So I felt like if I was reinstalling, I was watching some the linux experiments video anyway and was fascinated by linux, so I just decided to choose myself to use nobara-linux for the first time which was another one of the best decisions that I made as it opened me up to the terminal.
> grateful in retrospect is they didn't buy me a gpu
Great sentence! I will apply this to my kids as well, I guess.
I always tell them already: "In the future, you can game as much as you want, IF you learn a good programming language [which will be defined by me]" - let me see how this will work out in 1-2 years :-D
The first thing that my brothers did when I had the computer was firstly change the wallpaper to a good mountain wallpaper, installed vscode and asked me to program a python program to reverse print in python so print 10 9 8 7.. 1 each in new line (iirc) [I was in 8th grade]
then they asked me to square while reverse printing or something too. so printing 100 81 64 .. 1 each in new line.
> let me see how this will work out in 1-2 years :-D
Keep me updated haha! To be honest, I will admit though that I am not the greatest within coding itself right now as much as I love tinkering with open source. Personally I am wishing to learn coding with better interest when I get into college, I will have 4 years to learn peacefully (well hopefully if I get into decent college ie) :D
For me the challenge after using Linux was that I wanted to use archlinux because my brother (not cousin, real), flexed me his iirc distrotube archlinux once when we were eating something and I thus always considered arch to be the final boss of Linux lol and so I decided to install it and then I fell in love with arch (currently on cachy on desktop, but right now on mac which my brother gifted me :D)
On my birthday iirc once long time ago I think in 5-6th not sure, my brother gave me his laptop, I wanted to do python but python wanted admin password on windows to install properly. So what I did was I dont even remember how, but download one operating system which could then crack the windows password so that I can set new and I used that to then set a new password to then install python. to then only print hello world :D (I think only because one of the cousins I really admire mentioned that he made 2k loc of python once and I thought during that time, python is the endgame). We are talking about windows 7 but I think that windows 10 security must've gotten better. So these are some things that I have done, I wouldn't call it coding as much as tinkering but I love doing these things from as long as I can remember :D
I think this all started because I tried pirating pokemon-yellow so that I can play it. My brother just said to me google it, or told me the word rom and asked me to figure it out and I was in 2nd or 3rd grade maybe 4th grade lol and I pirated it (Hope nintendo doesn't sue me now xD)
Sorry for making this long but your comment somehow made me remember somethings that I had forgot/weren't touched in a long time xD! I think the main takeaway is that I just treated all of these as challenges I guess, like I wanted to prove myself that I can do that or if a thing is possible/not. I haven't done too much coding myself so I just say that I am tinkerer :D
I hope that this can be helpful to you to teach your kids what you mention. I mean make it a challenge where if they fail, they don't feel pressure but they also feel competitive just enough to try their best as much as they can :D and I think in some sense personally I just wanted some respect/to impress my elder cousins/brothers as they were really elder/mature than me. It's also not been all good though if you are too young than most of your cousins.
The thing is, I don't have any measurable advice, a lot of what I have done till now is just unquantified. Coding on the other hand is quantifiable in some sense (it works or it doesn't). I just do things because I wanted to, and I think I still do that same way. Sometimes I wish if the things that I want are something measurable but my mind doesn't work that way.
The thing is, which depresses me sometimes, is that I am just a number at the end of the day to many if not all whether including in future job/business etc., nobody to whom I interview when I wish to get a job from sometime from now is going to read a lot of this and with AI and some genuine problems in the industry like too many people, this problem gets even larger, sigh. So in that sense I just want to be happy sometimes.
Sorry for the long comment once again and the depressing end, but I recommend watching some cat videos though and I wish you and your kids to have a nice day! :D Say hi to them from my side!!
> Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt.
You’re confusing cause and effect here.
Companies are pushing apps very hard because it gives them a lot more ability to wield their various revenue enhancing dark patterns.
That kids see apps as the primary option is a corporate success metric, not an organic choice.
Anyway, the premise that “phone screen ==> native app not web app” is rather faulty, is it not?
They’re not confusing anything, you’re just sticking your head in the sand.
The modern entry path to “computing” is small screen devices (phones). Their point of newcomers not having our same entry path is accurate. This is organic, however much we don’t like it.
Anything past that is just market skating where the puck is.
I think they mean that a webapp is necessary desktop-first. Many websites/webapps are mobile-first. It resonate with me as I’m used to try new services on a (mobile) browser if available and switch to an app only if necessary.
> the premise that “phone screen ==> native app not web app” is rather faulty, is it not?
Okay but that's not what he's arguing, you're missing the point.
There's nothing stopping a website from being usable on a smartphone. In fact, almost all of these apps are just websites in disguise! They use web views to render.
The reason it's an app and not a website isn't because apps are better for smartphones. It's because apps are native code running.
It's also a choice that websites cannot present as apps (PWAs). Apple and Google purposefully did that so they can push users to apps instead of websites, for data farming purposes.
Wrong. While I agree about younger people’s impression and experience with apps and the internet, that is not what companies are responding to - in fact it’s backward.
Companies have for ages pushed apps due to more control and data. That’s why younger folk grew up with apps.
The push to apps was absolutely not due to companies responding to consumer sentiment. Yes now it has been ingrained so now there are expectations, but those are due to companies pushing people to apps for years and years
Apps generally have a lot more access to the user info than Web sites. I remember getting into an argument, here (one-sided, I didn't argue then, and I won't now), about how a Web site is just as intrusive and privacy-endangering as an app (I think they wrote PWAs, and didn't want to cede the point to native apps). I feel they were wrong. Apps can get more information than web sites; even with sandboxing.
In my experience, apps can figure out a lot more about the user, than a Web site.
I just reported a game to Apple, that, after the app has been resident for 24 hours, pops up an unescapable modal to sign into their Web site. I am sure the 24-hour delay, is so they don't get caught by the App Store folks. I suspect that what happens, during this "daily checkin," is that the app sends a bunch of encrypted data that it got from your device, to the servers in China.
Basically, they can learn more about you from the app, than from the Web site.
I generally avoid apps, where the Web site will do. I won't install banking apps, at all.
I suspect that what happens, during this "daily checkin," is that the app sends a bunch of encrypted data that it got from your device, to the servers in China.
What information do you think they got from your device other than what you gave them permission to have? If you actually have any info on how apps can break Apple's sandbox to leak your personal info, you should share it.
Yeah, it's OK. I said that I wouldn't argue, and I'm sticking to that.
Have a great day!
> What most people dont get ...
The OP Blog post is comparing web versions vs applications. Both on the phone. And arguing that browser representation is often better than app functionality. Using desktop vs small screen phone is a different matter.
Phones are perfectly capable of accessing websites. I think a lot of the shift here has to do with companies aggressively pushing apps because apps are more profitable, which in turn trains users to expect apps.
Sorry, there are by faaaar not as much useable mobile websites than crappy mobile websites - most mobile websites are not really optimized, more like "just let us deploy some custome mobile CSS and people will use it" style
Companies with poor quality mobile websites also usually have poor quality apps.
The website can be objectively bad, but still better than the app experience.
My company corporate card requires an app because it has an Authenticator to access the website. I tried the ole “but I only have a flip phone” and they said there was no other option. The bastards forced my hand.
So they issued you a company provided phone for this work specific functionality?
You haven't confirmed WHY they have a flip phone.
If you're using a flip phone in this day and age, then it's not about the money.
YES! Immense waste of money. But I’m one out of hundreds that avoided a corporate iPhone for years. I hate it.
There are authenticator extensions for web browsers.
Unapproved by the company.
I don't see any evidence that is a user-driven change.
For years now, often multiple times with the save vendor, I've been installing some vendors software, using it to complete a purchase that I had started in a web interface, then uninstalling the software, all so I could take advantage of ann unrealistically good promotion. I'm not talking about the type of savings that might be in an exceptionally good holiday promotion, that eats into most of, if not all of, the margin in the transaction. I'm talking about the type of promotion that would be used to promote a credit card, banking account, or gambling platform-- the kind of promotion that costs months worth of income from a customer but is worthwhile because the customer will be milked for years to come.
This appears to be more related to modern security features that lock the vendor out of your computer, but lock you out of your phone, shifting which interface gives the vendor the advantage in future transactions.
I’d be happy to use the app if they didn’t suck. The websites have more info and the browser is more capable by default. Like by default I can select any text I see, an address to copy into a calendar, a phone number to send to someone else, a name I want to paste into a search engine. an app is the opposite, by default nothing is selectable and I’m at the mercy of the nearly universally bad UX designer’s whims
Even on mobile I find the requirement for app installation to be an irritating requirement. Many of these mobile apps are much larger than they need to be, and clutter the user experience. Throw in excessive push notifications, and in many cases I would like to just go to a website for services I use infrequently.
Seriously, push notifications, requests to review the app, gratuitous permissions, ads that bypass my ad-blocker. Why would I want to do this?
> Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt. I guess they see more the possibilities of getting more data on their customers and even selling their data to others
Young people are the ones who claim they are most likely to abandon a purchase if they have to install an app: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/15/91-of-u...
I'm old. I use my phone for as much as I can, but if something isn't optimized for that screen, i will definitely use a large screen instead of suffering through the crap. As I said, I'm old - too old to be frustrated by shit software. Also, I prefer web apps to downloading native, with few exceptions. I don't want or need a lot of native apps.
I still remember when everyone was saying the only way to access a service would be through its AOL keyword.
There is still no better interface than the command line.
One thing that is useful to remember is that if you ask AI for help on using some app, it will likely refer to the mobile UI instead of the web UI. I find it annoying that sometimes there are features that are only available in the mobile UI.
It's worth mentioning that in many cases there is also the incentive to get away from Google's stranglehold on incoming traffic. Every app install is a path to your product that does not go through Google's SEO or SEM funnel.
I'm not sure about that. Kids around here seem to be learning to use a word processor (MS or Google), slide builder (MS, Google or Canva), search engine, as well as many educative apps on laptops at school starting from about age 8. Computers are not alien to them.
I am spoiled by big screen and tmux, I objectively cannot work with small screens any more.
I can tolerate chatting with a gateway agent, but that only last for maybe a single hour before I seriously need to vet all of the work that it and the underlying horde of agents has done.
Yes, people (including the olds like myself) have been gravitating away from using a PC for everyday tasks and towards things like pocket supercomputers, and people new to the world definitely start with phones these days. Phones are similar to PCs, in that both kinds of devices have quite capable web browsers and can also run purpose-built software.
But if the question in the context of a phone is app-vs-web, then the analog on a PC is program-vs-web.
Which is interesting, I think.
Someone might download an app on their phone to accomplish a specific task instead of use a browser on that same phone, and that trend seems to be increasingly in favor of dedicated apps.
But on the PC side, it appears to be going the other way: Prior to the introduction of things like Sir Tim Berners-Lee's WWW and ubiquitous always-on Internet, most tasks on a PC were done with dedicated, local programs. That has changed.
Nowadays, we have things like whole office suites (pick any of them) and featureful CAD systems (like Onshape) that run quite well within a browser. POP and IMAP used to rule the day, and now we use Gmail in a browser. So on the PC, the longer trend seems to be more in favor of platform-independent web-based things instead of dedicated programs.
So, it seems that the two market segments -- while functionally similar -- are moving in opposite directions.
(I don't have an axe to grind here. I just think it's fun to think about these things.)
> Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18
17yo here, I know that I might be a bit of an exception here but atleast within my privacy conscious friend circle, I feel like they prefer websites more than apps and I feel like that plays an impact, (Obviously this might make a difference as well that for some of my generation, they only use phone so phone applications feel more intuitive to them)
I used to say to my elder brother that I wish to make websites not apps if I do because websites are more portable etc., but he said that websites are hard to monetize etc. rather than apps which are easier to monetize. I think that one of the reasons is also that app are easily monetized and this has become a norm to many people outside of HN/privacy-conscious sphere in general.
I really wanted to make f-droid applications sometime ago but I don't know Java and I really love how easy it is to make an applicaation in golang/python/any lang in desktops usually but I tried making an tauri android rust application from my desktop Linux and it was really frustrating, I feel like there are some very low hanging fruits privacy win where open source tools can be converted into just bare minimum-ly good UI/UX android/ios apps (which works) and be published to something like f-droid.
> I feel like they prefer websites more than apps
The fact that you are here on HN tells me: You and your friends are tech savy, most in your age are not :-)
Edit: Regarding monetization -> yes, either carrier billing (if available) or just by iTunes account is much much easier and higher conversion, just becaues of the fact that people do not have to remember their payment details :-D
I mentioned privacy savvy friends because most of my friends aren't privacy savvy :D
I can only count two (one offline, my former classmate/friend who we studied together for 11 years from KG to 10th grande) and some other people
I have convinced my same offline friend I mentioned to use Linux, specifically hyprland so its a win :D
> most in your age are not :-)
So I agree in that sense. To be honest. I am saying out of all my friend/peer/former classmate circle, only 1-2 people are some that I consider to be privacy conscious.
Agree. Also depends on nature of experience you want to consume/deliver. There are somethings i've slowly to come to prefer an app for, but it's been overtime.
The generation conflict doesn't justify to permanently bug me with "install our app, it's awesome". It ends up with terrible UX.
this where i think any claims that an iphone is not a full computing experience as justification for disallowing freedom on it to build and run your own software as you see fit as a bit ridiculous.
I saw a television advert the other day that specifically called out Millennials and how, yes, you can book a vacation from your phone and you're going to be okay, dad.
I think, "I'm not downloading your app" is of course a perfectly fine perspective. I rarely do. And blogging about it is playing one's role in the techno-cultural tug-of-war. But I'm consciously aware that I'm in the dying minority and the world is changing regardless of how much I choose to yell at the clouds.
Sure, I can book on the smartphone!
But its super uncomfortable! :-)
And: Typing - I learnt in school to type perfectly with 10 fingers, on a smartphone only using my thumb is just too slow
Right?!
How can I cross reference things and check deals and copy paste to my spreadsheet on a phone!
I feel like you can do these things but I’m very skeptical that people aren’t worse off by doing it on a phone (when they have the choice)
>I saw a television advert the other day that specifically called out Millennials and how, yes, you can book a vacation from your phone and you're going to be okay, dad.
I wonder when dynamic pricing will switch from booking on phones being more expensive because you're most likely in a hurry to booking on desktop being more expensive because you're old and have more money to spend. Did that already happen?
I think what most people don't get is that an app is a gateway to get way more personal data of the user than the browser. I'm distrustful of any "app only" service for this reason. I think the article goes into more detail about other good reasons. What you're suggesting isn't a talking point because it's not pertinent.
This isn't about a user's age, or mobiles. You can use Firefox on your smartphone. It's about digital literacy in terms of security and privacy. No matter how old you are, you do have to be taught that you're the product of these services, not just the customer. You have to be taught why that matters and how to combat it.
That's an interesting mindset, since those 30+ tech savvy millennials are the ones that actually still have some money to spend left on apps and similar crap.
You're right... but I think you have incorrectly conflated "web" with "desktop". Websites work perfectly fine on smartphones when they are designed to do so. I'm using HN on my phone's web browser right now to type this comment. I don't need an app for HN.
I don't have many apps on my phone because I've found I simply don't need them. There are basically only two cases where I use apps:
1. When I want push notifications
2. When I want to use local files
If Android, try going into accessibility settings and set display size to maximum. Then see if you still like HN and many other websites with shitty unresponsive CSS.
PWAs were a cute experiment and they never took off, and even the vibe coders chose to vibe code native apps over half-baked PWAs.
There you go.
PWAs were more than an experiment - they were even mentioned in Apple keynotes (IIRC). And sandboxing was every bit as stable as website sandboxing.
They were killed because app store operators realized they bypassed an ability to police payments that could not be monitored and (effectively) taxed.
This was a technology that could have been successful in any environment where a merchant's freedom-to-request-direct-payment was protected. In such an environment, it would have shifted incentives that apps now become a burden on developers as well as on Apple and Google's review processes, and PWAs would flourish.
But that's not the environment we were in! And arguably, even post Epic's litigation, we aren't fully.
"The grandmas are too stupid to learn" but now it's the young people who are too dumb to figure out computers. So, I guess my generation is the only one that will ever figure out the Internet? Seems dumb.
This is true and goes further: There is no understanding of "the Web." For folks who "went online" and "surfed on the Internet" in the 90ies the whole thing with Internet addresses and the way a browser works are normal. For people gaining their experience on a phone the app icon on the home screen is the starting point to the individual offering.
Companies however exploit that and instead of just putting the icon on the home screen provide an app which allows more tracking, preventing ad blockers, avoiding the user from browsing elsewhere.
For me apps are limiting (tabbed browsing, ad blocker, ... are essential for anything serious), but others don't have that experience.