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Engineering students don't know what folders or directories are

One trend has been seen in more recent physics and engineering students when professors see how they handle computers, and that is that they don't organize files. They also don't understand what a folder, file, or directory is.

There has been a lot of talk about the so-called “digital natives”, which is what we call a generation that has grown up surrounded by technology and should know how to use it. But the reality is that the vast majority are only users of a single operating system and limit themselves to installing the necessary programs and following instructions. This is worsened by the current generation that has started their youth with a mobile phone or tablet that has never made them need to learn an advanced handling of any operating system. It is not the first case in which we see that despite living with computers for a long time, we do not use them as well as we seem, as indicated by a study of the Sociology department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the IMANcorp Foundation.

Deep down, we don't know how to use Windows as well as it seems

College students in courses from engineering to physics have to learn what files and folders are because that is not how they grew up using computers. Their way of using it is that whenever they need a file, they simply search for it with the search function. Catherine Garland., An astrophysicist, understands that they see everything as a cube and look for it in it.

This change in the way of organizing is due to the search functions of the operating system, such as the way phones and tablets handle file structure and the cloud. This causes them to have files on their desk in a disorganized way, something that is not exclusive to older people now.

This is not essentially a bad thing, but rather a change in usage derived from the implementation of functionalities in modern operating systems. The teachers noted that due to the difference in use, some students do not understand the concept of folders, files or directories, something important in computer engineering. But the teachers also tried using the search engine and began to understand that they do not need so many folders.

Source: PC Gamer

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Benjamin Rosa

Madrileño whose publishing career began in 2009. I love investigating curiosities that I later bring to you, readers, in articles. I studied photography, a skill that I use to create humorous photomontages.

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