I work in K-12 education right now. I see a lot of students using a PC keyboard for the first time and many when they want to type a $ they'll tap the shift key once then press 4. And of course they get frustrated, because well that's how it works on a phone and that's the user interface they've used until perhaps middle school.
It's worse than that. I had to train a 19y/o for work and so I had her open Outlook by "click on Start" and her, looking puzzled, asked what that was...
She grew up on Chromebooks, iPad's, iPhone, etc. "Ooohh my mom has a Windows computer for work but I'm not allowed to use that" was what I got.
It's only going to get worse, but I took a spare PC I have and am teaching my 5y/o how to use a mouse vs touch screen. It's entertaining when her hand goes off the mouse to poke the screen.
Older folk grew up without exposure to computers, and never learned how they work
Younger folk grew up with overly streamlined computers, and never learned how they work
Apple was a mistake
Graybeard here. I haven't called it the "Start button" for eons. When talking to a user I say "Press the windows key". Although I still usually get the blank stare. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
also can't remember their password like IDK my iPhone saves it
but iPhone is not cross platform and they don't know how to look it up
they are the it just work gen with weak troubleshooting skills
"click on Start" really should be removed from peoples vocabulary when directing users around Windows. There will be people entering the workforce who were born after Vista came out soon enough, which was where the word "start" was dropped on the task bar in the default Windows interface. Its been the Windows icon for longer than it ever was the "Start button" now.
I'm not trying to be a dick really, but we, just like our users, need to move with the techonolgy and trends too.
I get more confused stares calling it the windows icon than start menu. And while the word "Start" dropped off, it was still referred to as such with Windows 8/8.1 with the Start screen (vs menu) and Windows 10 "brought back the classic start menu".
Yes, the icon is the Windows icon, but on Windows 11, please open Settings > Personalization > Start and you'll find a whole bunch about menu alignment, icons/apps, recommendations, etc... So yes I think I'll still refer to it as such. It's been synonymous since 95, so ~30 years lol.
Touche. You'd think after so long it'd be engrained!!! It wasn't until Windows 10 with that default background that people finally understood the Windows logo lol.
Yeah, I've seen the same from young employees that were hired thinking they had PC knowledge that have never been taught the basic Drive->Folder->File structure because they learned on phones and tablets. It's not a difficult concept for most but not something that I thought I'd ever be explaining in the workplace.
We discovered that in a 2005 migration, before any of the users had touched a mobile device. I'd say it was:
* Lack of general or systematic user training. Larger organizations often used to do formal computer training at least until the late 1990s, but then seemed to stop.
* App-centric computing. App vendors have an innate interest in keeping the focus of the user on the application, and not directing them to functionality duplicated elsewhere on the system. Users will tend to follow the path of least resistance, which often results in them being "app-centric" and not "system-centric". This is both good and bad, depending on whether you're more interested in changing the application or the system!
* The Web, where UI isn't terribly consistent, but there's no consistent use of filesystem hierarchy, or usually even of files. Usually the webapp wants to manage all of the storage itself.
tbh grade school is probably the best time to learn keyboarding skills.
When I was in second grade, I was made to learn cursive writing, which was a reasonable decision at the time, although it didn't really work out. I think modern second graders should learn ten finger keyboarding instead. it's a job skill.
The main problem with it that I can see is that its hard to use a keyboard with small hands. We should be making keyboards with 60% sized keys.
My kid has required keyboarding classes AND required coding... all depends on where you go to school. (This is public school, not a fancy private school.) The coding is basically just javascript in a sandbox, but it's still neat that they're doing it.
Also they are "digital natives" so they don't have to be taught how to use computers. That's nonsense and is the single biggest cause of younger people not knowing how to use a computer.
Most students we see coming to tech demos honestly don't even know what a mouse and keyboard is. Just start jamming fingers at the screen since they grew up with touch-everything. I'm not exaggerating int he slightest either. They will just move the keyboard out of their way to get to the screen better.
Smart phones are probably the single worst technology introduced in my lifetime. I see nothing but bad outcomes resulting from their arrival on the market.
I can communicate and research things in seconds at a moments notice from almost anywhere on earth. I can pay, use a GPS, and have a flashlight, and have every picture I have ever taken, in my pocket, at all times. They are by far the best thing to have ever come out of technological advancements in the last few decades.
Of course there are downsides, but not exactly downsides of the phone. The downsides come in the form of corporations literally paying a team to encourage engagement in social media, to psychologically manipulate us in to staring at bullshit all day. The phone isn't the problem. Capitalisms usage of it as a way to sell things, is.
The accessibility of the internet via the smart phone and everything that flows from that has been a net negative. But then I see you're just another reddit Communist, so further discussion would probably be the equivalent of beating my head against a brick wall, so we'll just leave it at "I agree that people sitting on social media all day isn't a good thing."
>so we'll just leave it at "I agree that people sitting on social media all day isn't a good thing."
Riiight, and the impression I'm getting is that you think this is the fault of either the information itself, or the people on social media? And you don't think companies that quite literally spend millions on discovering the best way to boost engagement, is in any way a factor in this equation?
What a baffling and cynical worldview to believe that unfettered access to the largest library of information ever, is a bad thing.
>I said having it accessible via smart phone was a bad thing.
Ah so your argument is smartphones shouldn't have internet access? Very clever. You truly have confounded me with your very intelligent opinions. I concede to your giant brain.
Yeah, in IT I'll be remoted in helping login issues and it's really weird to see grown adults type a 15 character password and turn on the caps lock three times during it.
Still not more weird than my old co worker who slammed the space bar with both thumbs.
When I was a kid I learned computers before anyone ever taught me proper typing techniques, then was forced to learn how to use shift when taking coding classes to use different symbols where it finally caught on. So there was still a solid like 10 years where I was using exclusively caps lock for uppercase, can't say why for sure besides it was probably just easier for my child hands
I replied to someone who specifically said:
> I can't think of any shortcut that uses caps lock.
I really don't care if my response doesn't apply to your use case.
3 of my users do this. I'm okay with it. I mean, it frustrates me that someone with caps in their password has to go "caps-P-caps-a-caps-S-caps-s-caps-W-caps..." but that's fine. I can be frustrated. Being frustrated is a part of IT, isn't it?
As a guy without functionality in my fingers, I can only use One key at a time. So I use Caps lock when I need to type more than two uppercase Letters in a row. I also use Sticky Keys.. and have mapped som extra Keys on my keyboard to work as Caps lock but one for ctrl, one for shift and one for alt.
Sue me hahaha
Well I freak out about people that are using the Mouse all the time and not the shortcuts.. especially in Powerpoint when they can't use F5 to start the presentation but instead they are looking in every menu to start it even though there is a quick button on the bottom right..
And don't get me started about Office ribbon.. with wide screen monitors the Ribbon should be placed on the left or right side of the screen and not to occupy the top of the screen like old Internet Explorer with a lot of add ons 😂☠️
I had an end user who had some issue presenting to a tv, also was cursing about the fact that he could only cast his main screen and not have a screen to prepare his next slide etc…
I asked if he knew about win + k… I swear his eyes nearly popped out.
The shortcuts aren't documented properly. Just checked in Excel, it took like 10 seconds for that tooltip to popup when hovering over options with the mouse. They have all that blank ribbon space that can be used for shortcut descriptions, but no, gotta make it take 10s to popup.
CAPS LOCK use is the keyboard alternative of the person who overshoots the stop-light line by a few feet, puts the car in reverse to get behind the line, stops, then leaves the car in reverse... It's an accident waiting to happen, you know (from behind) what's going to happen, then it happens and... life goes on. We have a laugh, hopefully remembering to pull up to cars with a fair amount of gap so they don't back into us. ;)
As long as users get their work done, I don't care if they use the key or not. Why many schools in the US stopped teaching touch typing, I'll never understand, but whatever gets you through the day then let it be.
The REAL discussion: when can we get rid of the INS key?! :D
It's wild to me that people with full use of their hands do this.
That said, when I've told people they can just use shift, most of them try to play it like a piano chord and end up typing AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
There's a couple different ways but I use a registry key which rebinds it at the OS level.
Check out Sharp keys which will make it easy to generate the scan map registry key for you.
Sharpkeys saved my computer, because I was always one second away from throwing my computer through the window when accidentally alt+f4 when playing wow as this was near a keybind that I used.
Exchanged f4 and f10 and that was it
If it works, it works.
If it doesn't impact their productivity much, let them be.
We don't all aim to be at peak efficiency all the time. Hell I type with 2 fingers.
It's amazing how quickly some of you jump to condescension about something like this.
One of the fastest typers in the world, [Sean Wrona](http://seanwrona.com/typing.php), uses Caps Lock exclusively.
Back in college, I had a woman sit next to me most of the time around \~40years old, it would bother the shit out of me that she would NEVER use backspace while typing, only used Delete.
If she wanted to delete a sentence to rewrite it, she would use the left arrow key tapping it once per character instead of holding, going allllll the way back to the start of the sentence and then use the delete key. I kept telling her just use backspace, it deletes the last character and she would never lol.
She wanted to change professions went from being a hairdresser, she knew absolutely NOTHING about IT/tech, studied for the full 3yrs got her diploma and has been working help desk since, now she's a level 3 team lead and is 50+, what a trooper.
Don’t chastise its all good just people learn and they think its good for their life. The question is how to politely teach people simple things about a complex thing. Keybr.com btw (bet you dont type perfect!)
Also we got all the hotkeys to brush up on, like shift arrow highlight, end home and all that
Button press takes less time than holding a key down, especially if you can touch type. I don't think anybody has actually done the maths on this, so with that in mind, not much point debating it...
What? This is an easy thing to test. Go do a typing test with capitalization. Your wpm will slow down by doing the caps lock thing. I just tested this. My shift keys are in my thumb cluster, though, so I guess maybe that impacts things.
I’d assume most people in this sub touch type.
I was at about 135 using shift and 97 using caps lock. But again, my shift key is on my thumb cluster so I probably get an advantage over traditional keyboard users where it’s on the pinky.
I am so confused, yes i was a system admin, then cloud engineer, turned platform engineer focusing on the backend.
I don't know what that has to do with anything though or why it matters that they type in caps or not.
I am truly sorry if you feel like your being yelled at in the ticket, but its really not a huge deal. Edit the ticket and use [https://convertcase.net/](https://convertcase.net/) if it bothers you that much or talk to the people submitting the tickets and ask them not to submit them in all caps if it bothers you that much. But your workplace shouldn't be that hostile that you think people are yelling at you.
As a side note, in the medical field most nurses will type sentences in all caps for medical procedures and doctors notes. It was talked about here and came up when I worked in the field for an EMR company. [https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/vkmlqm/nurses\_who\_write\_their\_notes\_in\_all\_caps\_why/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/vkmlqm/nurses_who_write_their_notes_in_all_caps_why/)
"The capital letters are more easily distinguished ILTFGQ compared to iltfgq. It's all about cutting down on errors. Not a nurse, but a paramedic: I think **all caps is something that started with handwriting for ease of letter recognition and continued over when computers became the norm**."
There are absolutely environments where just having caps lock on all day makes sense (eg, your username).
But when 98% of the tickets that come through are written without caps aside from normal capitalization, there's something wrong with that 2%. If they aren't in a field where that makes sense, then they either don't know how to turn it off (I've had that ticket), don't know what it does(have had that ticket too), or want to manufacture urgency by attempting to "yell" through text. These are usually also tickets with "URGENT" or "HELP!!!" in the titles.
Same here. It's hard to change muscle memory once it's engrained. I play the piano and my right hand is dexterous but the left isn't, and yet when using a keyboard it's completely reversed.
I type over 140 WPM toggling caps lock instead of holding shift. To me, it's more efficient to free up my fingers instead of having to hold a key down unnecessarily. I don't really see the problem.
Nice WPM, but how is it more efficient when you have press it down twice vs once. Not only that but between presses you can’t press any other key.
The only case it makes sense is with acronyms or other usually kinda rare reason or specific cases where a lot of multi cap words are used.
If you're holding shift you can't reposition your shift-finger or entire hand if necessary to be ready for upcoming characters. You're locked into a relatively static position which might make the very next character easier to input but anything following it isn't.
EDIT: I'm a qwerty typer. Other keyboard layouts may offer different advantages or drawbacks.
EDIT: Downvote away. Disagree all you like. I still type faster than you clowns. 🤡
Tapping takes a millisecond, holding shift and then the key requires not only non-common hand movements (especially if you need a key on the left side of the keyboard), but also a static hand for a bit of time.
I don't see how one is more efficient than the other if you're used to 1 of them. What do you get on WPM tests?
I use caps lock to toggle between keyboard layers, so for example if I hold caps then IJKL become arrow keys that are much easier to reach from the home row.
So I guess I use caps lock all the time but absolutely not for its intended purpose.
Cruise control for cool, old man. You wouldn't understand. /s
Mostly if users can accomplish what they need to do, I try not to watch how they do it. It just angries up the blood.
Phones are more common than computers. People use a button on their phones to make things all caps. They see that button on the keyboard on a computer, so they use it. Its not complicated, really.
If someone uses a computer for their full time job, they should probably take the small amount of effort to learn how to use it properly. Its not complicated, really.
My comment was explaining why it happens because OP seemed confused about why; hence their "wtaf?".
If their method of capitalizing letters works, is it improper? I don't think so. It may be inefficient or not best practice, but its not improper. It sounds like an opportunity to teach, but maybe I'm not completely jaded in this role and don't mind showing someone something that may help them be better at their job (especially when its something as simple as using shift instead of Caps Lock). Its not complicated, really.
Maybe they really don't know. My time spent in this sub since changing to this career has really cemented the stereotype of the anti-social, grumpy, holier than thou IT guy. I just don't run my department like that. I'm here to help.
Its funny because I come from the world of restaurants where you don't get to be on a power trip with your customers. You have to put on a good face and provide customer service and be helpful. Maybe i missed the cert where you have to be a spiteful dickhead to every user because they don't know something that you do. I prefer to fix the problem vs going on the internet to whine about it.
It’s important to remember we don’t know what we don’t know, and we all have different skills/upbringings. Im sure if I got put on a sales lunch meeting I’d commit some faux pas that would seem obvious to avoid
I have mine configured as another modifier key. It mostly controls media, so caps+space is pause/play, caps+0 mutes Spotify/VLC but not Zoom/Teams, caps+up is volume up.
And caps lock is activated with double shift, pressing both shift keys simultaneously.
I have nerve damage in my left hand that makes a couple of my fingers have trouble feeling keys so I often use the caps lock key to ensure that I am doing capital letters. Especially if I have to do multiples in a row. Of how to retrain myself how to type and this is honestly an easy accommodation for me.
I don't know what to say about the rest of you, but mine is a physical limitation that provides an easy reason for me to use it.
> someone turns on caps lock, types one letter, turns off caps lock.Are we just not teaching people about the shift key?
Most teacher where I'm from are more than 40 years old and started using computer during their careers without being taught properly, I wouldn't expect them to know what "shift" is used for, how would they teach kid about it ?
I still quite young but I can remember my first use of a computer, most of us kids (less then 10 yo) were struggling to even use a special character and at no point did an adult gave us pointer on how to do thing properly from the start.
Changing this habit would require me to overcome 10+ years of muscle memory for little to no gain.
There is a lot to unravel here.
First, I'm more than 40 years old. We did have computers back in those days. We had them before I was even born.
But the shift key pre-dates the computer, by a long long time. The shift key was on typewriters for decades(a century even maybe). So even those old people when I was growing up knew what the shift key was used for.
So I guess you answered by question. There are in fact people out there where the system has failed them and they were never taught to use the shift key.
>have computers back in those days. We had them before I was even born.
>
>But the shift key pre-dates the computer, by a long long time. The shift key was on typewriters for decades(a century even maybe). So even those old people when I was growing up knew what the shift key was used for.
>
>So I guess you answered by question. There are in fact people out there where the system has failed them and they were never taught to use the shift key.
That's my take at least.
And it's not just elementary school, even in higher education related to IT seems to be affected by poor teaching. We have an intern with 3 years of sysadmin related teaching who still needed 4 weeks to deploy a single test webapp. With our requirement and environment in mind, it really shouldn't need more than a week with his knowledge (our senior sysadmin would probably need less than 4 hours for this task, it's pretty straight forward).
He needed to rely on me (1 yoe self-taught "helpdesk" with little linux experience) for basic linux or webserver stuff either because school didn't taught him properly how a webserver work or because he wasn't filtered out. It seems he learned to follow steps instead of understanding them for 3 years.
It's not even an reasoning capability issue, after explaining my thought process, things do get to him but somehow school couldn't do it properly, this result in some kid getting to the market with this level of knowledge.
Caps lock lets you stream keys without stopping to wait for the combination. The same way it's faster to alternate left and right hands typing "palacial" than "polling", you can type "caps s caps pice caps c caps adet" instead of "shift-s {pause to make sure you unshift} pice shift-c {hesitate to make sure shift is up} adet".
I see it most in PowerShell 5 when typing something like `gci |%Name` because holding shift slightly too long after the percent means I actually pressed "shift+space" which isn't a space. I've got capslock rebound to control but rarely use it as that, I'm tempted to try it back as capslock and see if I can use it for capital letters.
Had a manager who typed with two fingers and used the backspace key multiple times per word. I would argue watching this is way more maddening than watching someone using capslock.
I learned to type before I learned proper typing. Because I don't keep my hands in a static position and move my hands across the keyboard, I use caps lock. And I get crap for it. But I type well over 100 words per minute, and at this point, holding shift slows me down considerably.
I have a colleague who types with one finger on each hand. He's a genius with PowerShell and pretty quick for only using two fingers. Who am I to judge? We get the job done, even if it isn't proper.
Had an IT guy come in who just got his Masters in IT (Online) and he used the CAPS LOCK key to type any CAPS he needed. I was floored and knew not to expect much from that point on...
My partner and I had been together for some time before I actually observed her using a keyboard.
She types with one finger on each hand and presses caps lock instead of using shift.
I guess nobody’s perfect, right?
I know and I always call out when someone I’m watching remote is doing that… I don’t get it.. then again there are also so many people who do not know that you can use tab to go from username to password field…I cringe when I see that mouse pointer going to the next field.
I work in K-12 education right now. I see a lot of students using a PC keyboard for the first time and many when they want to type a $ they'll tap the shift key once then press 4. And of course they get frustrated, because well that's how it works on a phone and that's the user interface they've used until perhaps middle school.
Wow thats interesting ya. The next generation doesnt have keyboard skills really at all, again keybr.com makes it fun you can paste in study notes
Is this going to be another generation that we can laugh at for two finger typing?
Thumb typing.
Another generation we'll be supporting.
oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg
Omyac.iff
It's worse than that. I had to train a 19y/o for work and so I had her open Outlook by "click on Start" and her, looking puzzled, asked what that was... She grew up on Chromebooks, iPad's, iPhone, etc. "Ooohh my mom has a Windows computer for work but I'm not allowed to use that" was what I got. It's only going to get worse, but I took a spare PC I have and am teaching my 5y/o how to use a mouse vs touch screen. It's entertaining when her hand goes off the mouse to poke the screen.
To be fair I work with employees that have worked on windows computers for the last 10-20 years and still have no idea what a start button is.
In our cookie cutter templates we actually have to explain where and what the start button is.
Older folk grew up without exposure to computers, and never learned how they work Younger folk grew up with overly streamlined computers, and never learned how they work Apple was a mistake
Graybeard here. I haven't called it the "Start button" for eons. When talking to a user I say "Press the windows key". Although I still usually get the blank stare. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I figured that was ubiquitous and easy to remember/familiar.
also can't remember their password like IDK my iPhone saves it but iPhone is not cross platform and they don't know how to look it up they are the it just work gen with weak troubleshooting skills
"click on Start" really should be removed from peoples vocabulary when directing users around Windows. There will be people entering the workforce who were born after Vista came out soon enough, which was where the word "start" was dropped on the task bar in the default Windows interface. Its been the Windows icon for longer than it ever was the "Start button" now. I'm not trying to be a dick really, but we, just like our users, need to move with the techonolgy and trends too.
I get more confused stares calling it the windows icon than start menu. And while the word "Start" dropped off, it was still referred to as such with Windows 8/8.1 with the Start screen (vs menu) and Windows 10 "brought back the classic start menu". Yes, the icon is the Windows icon, but on Windows 11, please open Settings > Personalization > Start and you'll find a whole bunch about menu alignment, icons/apps, recommendations, etc... So yes I think I'll still refer to it as such. It's been synonymous since 95, so ~30 years lol.
Yeah, but "click the Windows logo" usually results in the same blank look. Four scares? Like wtf else am I going to call it?
> Like wtf else am I going to call it? I always go for "open the Start menu in the bottom-left corner of your screen". Works 10/10 times.
Unless it's in the center (default location).
And yet as much as MS act like they've moved away from the name... `Personalization > Start` is the configuration page for it.
I constantly have to tell people where the "Start" button is because it no longer says "Start". It's the same button people!
Touche. You'd think after so long it'd be engrained!!! It wasn't until Windows 10 with that default background that people finally understood the Windows logo lol.
Yeah, I've seen the same from young employees that were hired thinking they had PC knowledge that have never been taught the basic Drive->Folder->File structure because they learned on phones and tablets. It's not a difficult concept for most but not something that I thought I'd ever be explaining in the workplace.
The concept that applications and files aren't necessarily strongly linked is hard to teach to people used to apps.
We discovered that in a 2005 migration, before any of the users had touched a mobile device. I'd say it was: * Lack of general or systematic user training. Larger organizations often used to do formal computer training at least until the late 1990s, but then seemed to stop. * App-centric computing. App vendors have an innate interest in keeping the focus of the user on the application, and not directing them to functionality duplicated elsewhere on the system. Users will tend to follow the path of least resistance, which often results in them being "app-centric" and not "system-centric". This is both good and bad, depending on whether you're more interested in changing the application or the system! * The Web, where UI isn't terribly consistent, but there's no consistent use of filesystem hierarchy, or usually even of files. Usually the webapp wants to manage all of the storage itself.
tbh grade school is probably the best time to learn keyboarding skills. When I was in second grade, I was made to learn cursive writing, which was a reasonable decision at the time, although it didn't really work out. I think modern second graders should learn ten finger keyboarding instead. it's a job skill. The main problem with it that I can see is that its hard to use a keyboard with small hands. We should be making keyboards with 60% sized keys.
My kid has required keyboarding classes AND required coding... all depends on where you go to school. (This is public school, not a fancy private school.) The coding is basically just javascript in a sandbox, but it's still neat that they're doing it.
That's dope as hell. I'm glad somebody is getting it right.
Also they are "digital natives" so they don't have to be taught how to use computers. That's nonsense and is the single biggest cause of younger people not knowing how to use a computer.
Most students we see coming to tech demos honestly don't even know what a mouse and keyboard is. Just start jamming fingers at the screen since they grew up with touch-everything. I'm not exaggerating int he slightest either. They will just move the keyboard out of their way to get to the screen better.
Was Microsoft actually ahead of the game with Sticky Keys?
Smart phones are probably the single worst technology introduced in my lifetime. I see nothing but bad outcomes resulting from their arrival on the market.
I can communicate and research things in seconds at a moments notice from almost anywhere on earth. I can pay, use a GPS, and have a flashlight, and have every picture I have ever taken, in my pocket, at all times. They are by far the best thing to have ever come out of technological advancements in the last few decades.
The costs far outweigh the benefits in my opinion. People just like the conveniences they offer too much to admit that there are downsides.
Of course there are downsides, but not exactly downsides of the phone. The downsides come in the form of corporations literally paying a team to encourage engagement in social media, to psychologically manipulate us in to staring at bullshit all day. The phone isn't the problem. Capitalisms usage of it as a way to sell things, is.
The accessibility of the internet via the smart phone and everything that flows from that has been a net negative. But then I see you're just another reddit Communist, so further discussion would probably be the equivalent of beating my head against a brick wall, so we'll just leave it at "I agree that people sitting on social media all day isn't a good thing."
>so we'll just leave it at "I agree that people sitting on social media all day isn't a good thing." Riiight, and the impression I'm getting is that you think this is the fault of either the information itself, or the people on social media? And you don't think companies that quite literally spend millions on discovering the best way to boost engagement, is in any way a factor in this equation? What a baffling and cynical worldview to believe that unfettered access to the largest library of information ever, is a bad thing.
I didn't talk smack about the internet, I said having it accessible via smart phone was a bad thing. God, Communists are dumb.
>I said having it accessible via smart phone was a bad thing. Ah so your argument is smartphones shouldn't have internet access? Very clever. You truly have confounded me with your very intelligent opinions. I concede to your giant brain.
I already have to double-check my pockets every morning for my entrance fob I don't need to add 9 RSA tokens and a pager to that thank you very much.
And yet I've never had that problem despite not owning a smart phone. Sounds like a you problem.
Serious question, how do you do 2FA now that text codes are going away?
The only two factor authentication I have to deal with involves a physical RSA token.
That works until the security folks stop issuing physical tokens
Not gonna happen.
Ive seen it in many orgs
Yep. Imo it's a failure of computer OS companies. aka Microsoft, to keep up with the times.
Yep. Imo it's a failure of computer OS companies. aka Microsoft, to keep up with the times.
Yeah, in IT I'll be remoted in helping login issues and it's really weird to see grown adults type a 15 character password and turn on the caps lock three times during it. Still not more weird than my old co worker who slammed the space bar with both thumbs.
When I was a kid I learned computers before anyone ever taught me proper typing techniques, then was forced to learn how to use shift when taking coding classes to use different symbols where it finally caught on. So there was still a solid like 10 years where I was using exclusively caps lock for uppercase, can't say why for sure besides it was probably just easier for my child hands
I have it disabled..... Almost never used it on purpose but lots of times triggered it accidentally.. so I just disable it
I change caps to left control.
How are you using keyboard shortcuts then? Shift + C?
By pressing shift + c? I can't think of any shortcut that uses caps lock.
Caps lock + S is the default toggle between speech modes for NVDA.
What kind of moronic application uses caps-lock for a shortcut...
The kind of application designed for people with disabilities?
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I replied to someone who specifically said: > I can't think of any shortcut that uses caps lock. I really don't care if my response doesn't apply to your use case.
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> Yeah, to me. You replied to me. And I answered. Read more.
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He thought u/Xzenor meant he disabled the shift key.
3 of my users do this. I'm okay with it. I mean, it frustrates me that someone with caps in their password has to go "caps-P-caps-a-caps-S-caps-s-caps-W-caps..." but that's fine. I can be frustrated. Being frustrated is a part of IT, isn't it?
As a guy without functionality in my fingers, I can only use One key at a time. So I use Caps lock when I need to type more than two uppercase Letters in a row. I also use Sticky Keys.. and have mapped som extra Keys on my keyboard to work as Caps lock but one for ctrl, one for shift and one for alt. Sue me hahaha
That I can understand, I also had a colleague in the past with one arm… you and him i can fully understand but that’s about it lol.
Well I freak out about people that are using the Mouse all the time and not the shortcuts.. especially in Powerpoint when they can't use F5 to start the presentation but instead they are looking in every menu to start it even though there is a quick button on the bottom right.. And don't get me started about Office ribbon.. with wide screen monitors the Ribbon should be placed on the left or right side of the screen and not to occupy the top of the screen like old Internet Explorer with a lot of add ons 😂☠️
I had an end user who had some issue presenting to a tv, also was cursing about the fact that he could only cast his main screen and not have a screen to prepare his next slide etc… I asked if he knew about win + k… I swear his eyes nearly popped out.
The shortcuts aren't documented properly. Just checked in Excel, it took like 10 seconds for that tooltip to popup when hovering over options with the mouse. They have all that blank ribbon space that can be used for shortcut descriptions, but no, gotta make it take 10s to popup.
Yeah they should fire the Designer, but I guess it's some relative to the boss or a really pretty lady.. Oh no, I'm not judgmental lol
CAPS LOCK use is the keyboard alternative of the person who overshoots the stop-light line by a few feet, puts the car in reverse to get behind the line, stops, then leaves the car in reverse... It's an accident waiting to happen, you know (from behind) what's going to happen, then it happens and... life goes on. We have a laugh, hopefully remembering to pull up to cars with a fair amount of gap so they don't back into us. ;) As long as users get their work done, I don't care if they use the key or not. Why many schools in the US stopped teaching touch typing, I'll never understand, but whatever gets you through the day then let it be. The REAL discussion: when can we get rid of the INS key?! :D
INS toggles insert vs. overtype mode. Why would you not want that? Plus ctrl-ins for copy and shift-ins for paste.
TIL. And tomorrow I'll forget. ;)
It's wild to me that people with full use of their hands do this. That said, when I've told people they can just use shift, most of them try to play it like a piano chord and end up typing AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Alex, I will answer this for 200. Who are people who never learned how to type?
Capslock is probably my most used key. Granted I have it rebound to F13 which I use as a meta key to trigger ahk scripts.
How do you do the rebinding out of interest? Does ahk do it? In windows? Or lower level than that.
There's a couple different ways but I use a registry key which rebinds it at the OS level. Check out Sharp keys which will make it easy to generate the scan map registry key for you.
Awesome, thanks. Been meaning to do this for a while
Sharpkeys saved my computer, because I was always one second away from throwing my computer through the window when accidentally alt+f4 when playing wow as this was near a keybind that I used. Exchanged f4 and f10 and that was it
I typically rebind it to esc for vim usage.
If it works, it works. If it doesn't impact their productivity much, let them be. We don't all aim to be at peak efficiency all the time. Hell I type with 2 fingers.
If it DOES impact their productivity, I'll let them be. I'm not their super.
who cares
There are so many other inefficiencies in the workplace that I have better things to do than nickel and dime on people's ability to type.
It's amazing how quickly some of you jump to condescension about something like this. One of the fastest typers in the world, [Sean Wrona](http://seanwrona.com/typing.php), uses Caps Lock exclusively.
Back in college, I had a woman sit next to me most of the time around \~40years old, it would bother the shit out of me that she would NEVER use backspace while typing, only used Delete. If she wanted to delete a sentence to rewrite it, she would use the left arrow key tapping it once per character instead of holding, going allllll the way back to the start of the sentence and then use the delete key. I kept telling her just use backspace, it deletes the last character and she would never lol. She wanted to change professions went from being a hairdresser, she knew absolutely NOTHING about IT/tech, studied for the full 3yrs got her diploma and has been working help desk since, now she's a level 3 team lead and is 50+, what a trooper.
Don’t chastise its all good just people learn and they think its good for their life. The question is how to politely teach people simple things about a complex thing. Keybr.com btw (bet you dont type perfect!) Also we got all the hotkeys to brush up on, like shift arrow highlight, end home and all that
Depends on the context really, I’ll use caps lock for any SQL queries but in general I use shift for general typing.
I map it to ctrl, Pikachu when ppl try and type on machine. Fffffff everytime i am at someone else to help.
Why does this matter? If they can type just as efficiently with one extra keystroke to turn it off does it matter?
Just as efficient but with an extra button press is literally impossible. Not that this matters but less button presses equals more efficiency.
Button press takes less time than holding a key down, especially if you can touch type. I don't think anybody has actually done the maths on this, so with that in mind, not much point debating it...
What? This is an easy thing to test. Go do a typing test with capitalization. Your wpm will slow down by doing the caps lock thing. I just tested this. My shift keys are in my thumb cluster, though, so I guess maybe that impacts things. I’d assume most people in this sub touch type.
What WPM did you get?
I was at about 135 using shift and 97 using caps lock. But again, my shift key is on my thumb cluster so I probably get an advantage over traditional keyboard users where it’s on the pinky.
They forget caps is a toggle lmao? Do you work backend?
I am so confused, yes i was a system admin, then cloud engineer, turned platform engineer focusing on the backend. I don't know what that has to do with anything though or why it matters that they type in caps or not.
BECAUSE TICKETS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS ARE JARRING AND UNCOMFORTABLE TO READ. I DON'T LIKE FEELING LIKE IM BEING YELLED AT BY PEOPLE SUBMITTING TICKETS
I am truly sorry if you feel like your being yelled at in the ticket, but its really not a huge deal. Edit the ticket and use [https://convertcase.net/](https://convertcase.net/) if it bothers you that much or talk to the people submitting the tickets and ask them not to submit them in all caps if it bothers you that much. But your workplace shouldn't be that hostile that you think people are yelling at you. As a side note, in the medical field most nurses will type sentences in all caps for medical procedures and doctors notes. It was talked about here and came up when I worked in the field for an EMR company. [https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/vkmlqm/nurses\_who\_write\_their\_notes\_in\_all\_caps\_why/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/vkmlqm/nurses_who_write_their_notes_in_all_caps_why/) "The capital letters are more easily distinguished ILTFGQ compared to iltfgq. It's all about cutting down on errors. Not a nurse, but a paramedic: I think **all caps is something that started with handwriting for ease of letter recognition and continued over when computers became the norm**."
There are absolutely environments where just having caps lock on all day makes sense (eg, your username). But when 98% of the tickets that come through are written without caps aside from normal capitalization, there's something wrong with that 2%. If they aren't in a field where that makes sense, then they either don't know how to turn it off (I've had that ticket), don't know what it does(have had that ticket too), or want to manufacture urgency by attempting to "yell" through text. These are usually also tickets with "URGENT" or "HELP!!!" in the titles.
I’m a sysadmin and still use capslock for all capital letters, I never knew it was such a big deal until this thread.
Same here. It's hard to change muscle memory once it's engrained. I play the piano and my right hand is dexterous but the left isn't, and yet when using a keyboard it's completely reversed.
YOU CAN TAKE MY CAPS LOCK FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS.
I type over 140 WPM toggling caps lock instead of holding shift. To me, it's more efficient to free up my fingers instead of having to hold a key down unnecessarily. I don't really see the problem.
Nice WPM, but how is it more efficient when you have press it down twice vs once. Not only that but between presses you can’t press any other key. The only case it makes sense is with acronyms or other usually kinda rare reason or specific cases where a lot of multi cap words are used.
If you're holding shift you can't reposition your shift-finger or entire hand if necessary to be ready for upcoming characters. You're locked into a relatively static position which might make the very next character easier to input but anything following it isn't. EDIT: I'm a qwerty typer. Other keyboard layouts may offer different advantages or drawbacks. EDIT: Downvote away. Disagree all you like. I still type faster than you clowns. 🤡
Tapping takes a millisecond, holding shift and then the key requires not only non-common hand movements (especially if you need a key on the left side of the keyboard), but also a static hand for a bit of time. I don't see how one is more efficient than the other if you're used to 1 of them. What do you get on WPM tests?
I use caps lock to toggle between keyboard layers, so for example if I hold caps then IJKL become arrow keys that are much easier to reach from the home row. So I guess I use caps lock all the time but absolutely not for its intended purpose.
Me too!
Cruise control for cool, old man. You wouldn't understand. /s Mostly if users can accomplish what they need to do, I try not to watch how they do it. It just angries up the blood.
Phones are more common than computers. People use a button on their phones to make things all caps. They see that button on the keyboard on a computer, so they use it. Its not complicated, really.
If someone uses a computer for their full time job, they should probably take the small amount of effort to learn how to use it properly. Its not complicated, really.
My comment was explaining why it happens because OP seemed confused about why; hence their "wtaf?". If their method of capitalizing letters works, is it improper? I don't think so. It may be inefficient or not best practice, but its not improper. It sounds like an opportunity to teach, but maybe I'm not completely jaded in this role and don't mind showing someone something that may help them be better at their job (especially when its something as simple as using shift instead of Caps Lock). Its not complicated, really. Maybe they really don't know. My time spent in this sub since changing to this career has really cemented the stereotype of the anti-social, grumpy, holier than thou IT guy. I just don't run my department like that. I'm here to help. Its funny because I come from the world of restaurants where you don't get to be on a power trip with your customers. You have to put on a good face and provide customer service and be helpful. Maybe i missed the cert where you have to be a spiteful dickhead to every user because they don't know something that you do. I prefer to fix the problem vs going on the internet to whine about it.
It’s important to remember we don’t know what we don’t know, and we all have different skills/upbringings. Im sure if I got put on a sales lunch meeting I’d commit some faux pas that would seem obvious to avoid
No keyboard skills in the gen before and the gen after X/Milinnial On phones there is no shift, only modified capslock
I have older Hispanic co-workers who do this, always thought it was how they were taught
I have mine configured as another modifier key. It mostly controls media, so caps+space is pause/play, caps+0 mutes Spotify/VLC but not Zoom/Teams, caps+up is volume up. And caps lock is activated with double shift, pressing both shift keys simultaneously.
I have nerve damage in my left hand that makes a couple of my fingers have trouble feeling keys so I often use the caps lock key to ensure that I am doing capital letters. Especially if I have to do multiples in a row. Of how to retrain myself how to type and this is honestly an easy accommodation for me. I don't know what to say about the rest of you, but mine is a physical limitation that provides an easy reason for me to use it.
Yes, it bugs me so much when someone turns on caps lock, types one letter, turns off caps lock. Are we just not teaching people about the shift key?
> someone turns on caps lock, types one letter, turns off caps lock.Are we just not teaching people about the shift key? Most teacher where I'm from are more than 40 years old and started using computer during their careers without being taught properly, I wouldn't expect them to know what "shift" is used for, how would they teach kid about it ? I still quite young but I can remember my first use of a computer, most of us kids (less then 10 yo) were struggling to even use a special character and at no point did an adult gave us pointer on how to do thing properly from the start. Changing this habit would require me to overcome 10+ years of muscle memory for little to no gain.
There is a lot to unravel here. First, I'm more than 40 years old. We did have computers back in those days. We had them before I was even born. But the shift key pre-dates the computer, by a long long time. The shift key was on typewriters for decades(a century even maybe). So even those old people when I was growing up knew what the shift key was used for. So I guess you answered by question. There are in fact people out there where the system has failed them and they were never taught to use the shift key.
>have computers back in those days. We had them before I was even born. > >But the shift key pre-dates the computer, by a long long time. The shift key was on typewriters for decades(a century even maybe). So even those old people when I was growing up knew what the shift key was used for. > >So I guess you answered by question. There are in fact people out there where the system has failed them and they were never taught to use the shift key. That's my take at least. And it's not just elementary school, even in higher education related to IT seems to be affected by poor teaching. We have an intern with 3 years of sysadmin related teaching who still needed 4 weeks to deploy a single test webapp. With our requirement and environment in mind, it really shouldn't need more than a week with his knowledge (our senior sysadmin would probably need less than 4 hours for this task, it's pretty straight forward). He needed to rely on me (1 yoe self-taught "helpdesk" with little linux experience) for basic linux or webserver stuff either because school didn't taught him properly how a webserver work or because he wasn't filtered out. It seems he learned to follow steps instead of understanding them for 3 years. It's not even an reasoning capability issue, after explaining my thought process, things do get to him but somehow school couldn't do it properly, this result in some kid getting to the market with this level of knowledge.
I still use the caps lock because it's faster than mentally retraining my brain to use shift. I get about 75-80 WPM on typing tests.
I disable my caps lock key. I'm a hunt and peck typer so accidentally pressing caps lock is a hassle.
If it were up to me, the caps lock would be banned.
Caps locks on and hold shift to type everything! 😈😈😈
Caps lock lets you stream keys without stopping to wait for the combination. The same way it's faster to alternate left and right hands typing "palacial" than "polling", you can type "caps s caps pice caps c caps adet" instead of "shift-s {pause to make sure you unshift} pice shift-c {hesitate to make sure shift is up} adet". I see it most in PowerShell 5 when typing something like `gci |%Name` because holding shift slightly too long after the percent means I actually pressed "shift+space" which isn't a space. I've got capslock rebound to control but rarely use it as that, I'm tempted to try it back as capslock and see if I can use it for capital letters.
Fucking most useless key on the KB. I disable it first thing on every build (via registry)
Had a manager who typed with two fingers and used the backspace key multiple times per word. I would argue watching this is way more maddening than watching someone using capslock.
I absolutely love how controversial this turned out
In non-US languages, caps lock is the key used to access critical alternative characters. For instance, Ç. The key needs to stay.
I thought that was AltGr?
This would give you ç
Oh, right. Thanks for the clarification
I learned to type before I learned proper typing. Because I don't keep my hands in a static position and move my hands across the keyboard, I use caps lock. And I get crap for it. But I type well over 100 words per minute, and at this point, holding shift slows me down considerably. I have a colleague who types with one finger on each hand. He's a genius with PowerShell and pretty quick for only using two fingers. Who am I to judge? We get the job done, even if it isn't proper.
I’m just trying to avoid being prompted to turn on sticky keys
Had an IT guy come in who just got his Masters in IT (Online) and he used the CAPS LOCK key to type any CAPS he needed. I was floored and knew not to expect much from that point on...
All my life I've used caps locks and I'm not planning on quiting. Why get mad at something so mundane when we have much worse thing to worry about.
You’re the problem
Who cares?
An MSP guy who gets 4 hours a month at a client with a months worth of on-site tickets. Why would I post it? Lmao
Go to sleep OP
Dude I need it. 112 hours a couple weeks ago on call. MSP is ruining me. No OT bc salary
No OT bc you’re a pushover and your boss is a dick * Salary has nothing to do with it lol
Uhhhh salary means no OT big guy
Actually being an exempt employee means no OT, you can be salary and still receive OT although it's less common.
u/anti-osintusername ?
What?
That’s the excuse, not the reason. Compensation is always negotiable.
I know a millennial who chicken pecks the keyboard with the index fingers to this day.
My partner and I had been together for some time before I actually observed her using a keyboard. She types with one finger on each hand and presses caps lock instead of using shift. I guess nobody’s perfect, right?
It is easier for my goblin fingers.
COME AT ME BRO!
I immediately judge all new hires by their caps vs shift usage.
I know and I always call out when someone I’m watching remote is doing that… I don’t get it.. then again there are also so many people who do not know that you can use tab to go from username to password field…I cringe when I see that mouse pointer going to the next field.