Ubiquitous difficulty

I have kids and I love them! As they grow, I learn along the way various steps and stages of learning & development. It is no wonder that they say “you grow once more as your kids grow”…

One of the recent realization has to do with something many of us take for granted and consider ubiquitous, that is reading and operating an analogue clock. We put little effort in reading a watch face, yet learning kids to read the time on an analogue clock is a different thing.

It became obvious to me when I was practicing with my younger son and decided to take on the “GenAI” track and provide him with some sample readings.

Here enter the “Prompt”…”Generate an analogue clock image showing 16:43 time”.

Technically, the image can pass an acceptance test as it has a text saying “Wall clock displaying 16:43”.

I know, this post might not age too well if #ai advances as some predict, yet I believe we mark such growing pains and admit that the age old jokes about time, time zones and other date&time related topics in programming will not disappear too soon.

So, let’s not underestimate the difficulty of a task and be amazed by the learning ability of young children. One needs a lot of determination to master understanding what some described as one of the most difficult to understand design systems of all times …the clock! It proves times and times again that it is difficult, yet ubiquitous.