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0 pointskaladin-jasnah2mo ago0 comments

> 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.

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10 comments · 5 top-level

technothrasher2mo ago· 3 in thread

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.

Groxx2mo ago

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.

AlBugdy2mo ago

> 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.

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t-32mo ago

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.

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halJordan2mo ago· 2 in thread

Kinda stretching the definition of kid there, a little past the breaking point imo.

dasil0032mo ago

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.

sebastiennight2mo ago

Fun fact: dail003's stepdad wouldn't have been able to call any president a "kid" for over a decade now.

fho2mo ago

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.

Hoodedcrow2mo ago

The only situation I can think of is when you're in public transport and settling down with a laptop or paper is not really feasible. But if that came up frequently, I'd rather buy a tablet. Some students in my class also use tablets in class instead of laptops.

NERD_ALERT2mo ago

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.

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