9 ms·

I am a little scared from the distinction we are start to make between "computers" and "developers' computers" In most computer nowadays you cannot code (table

by siscia 11y ago

I am a little scared from the distinction we are start to make between "computers" and "developers' computers" In most computer nowadays you cannot code (tables and smartphones), are computers doomed to be an expensive tool for few "nerd" ? What will be the impact on computer literacy ?

chx 11y ago
Here's my blogpost on this from 5.5 years ago http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom.html http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom.html
cm-t 11y ago
Well, because we are on an ubuntu thread, I will link you those just for the fun ;) http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/developers http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/developers https://plus.google.com/u/0/105864202742705090915/posts/jNvZ281GEeh https://plus.google.com/u/0/105864202742705090915/posts/jNvZ...
omaranto 11y ago
What do you mean you "cannot" code on tablets and smartphones? There are nice interpreters and compilers in the official app stores for major mobiles OS, aren't there? I've used Python on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Also J, Ocaml, some dialects of Lisp, C# and Ruby, that I can remember now (each language on at least one of those OSes, sometimes more than one). Not to mention these devices all come with web browsers which means at the very least you can use JavaScript (I've done at least one Project Euler question on an iPod Touch in CoffeeScript standing in line at the bank.) The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.)
- lossolo 11y ago
  I tried to code on smartphone, never again. I am x times more productive on desktop.
  - omaranto 11y ago
    Absolutely! Programming is much more comfortable with a physical keyboard. I wasn't suggesting coding on a phone is ideal, just that it is possible.
  - jshevek 11y ago
    Edit: Just realized you might have meant _on_ the phone as in 'using the on screen keyboard'. Ug. That would be truly awful. During one weekend in which my only options were android devices, I was pleasantly surprised by the packages available in termux. With tmux, git, and ssh installed, I mounted the tablet at the right height and connected a quality keyboard via usb. I actually forgot that I was coding on a tablet! The phone experience was far more sensitive to maintaining good posture throughout, but being strongly incentivized to keep good posture actually made the experience more pleasant in a way. However, this particular phone was around 1280x720 I believe - seeing individual pixels again, and being pixel-limited (not physical size limited) in the use of panes in tmux were the only facets I found truly unpleasant. I'm eager to try coding with a high res VR headset.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    I've recently started using Termux on my phone with a bluetooth keyboard - I'm as productive as I would be doing dev over SSH. All the tools I'd use on a server are there (node, git, nano, etc). I've written a small API server with it and it wasn't a disaster. Admittedly I'm more productive when I'm on my laptop with Atom and a couple of monitors, but if that isn't an option I can still do work. It's a bonus rather than an alternative.
- siscia 11y ago
  Well of course you can technically code on a smartphone or tablets, I simply meant that is absolutely not practical.
- userbinator 11y ago
  Those are "second-class" or even "third-class" citizens in the ecosystem. Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? That's what makes the traditional, document-centric, PC ecosystem so powerful. While being able to play around with Project Euler can be fun, it amounts to "I can run a Turing-machine simulator" and doesn't represent anything more than a tiny fraction of what people want to do with computers when they say they want to "code". You may as well be playing one of the numerous puzzle games that involve much of the same concepts. To use your iPod Touch as an example, if it were more like a traditional desktop computer, you would also be able to do things like write an app to manage your music playlists. The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.) Not surprising if it's a Windows tablet based on the PC architecture - those are far closer to the traditional desktop than iDevices and Androids. If by C# compiler you're referring to the one that comes with the .NET framework, that's been there since the first versions; pity it's not so well known with MS trying to push VS as hard as possible...
  - Sephr 11y ago
    > Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? Yes, you can. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui
- interfixus 11y ago
  You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.
  - interfixus 11y ago
    Apparently, you can't really do anything on a tablet or phone. Or at least I can't. My phone app chose this particular comment as a nice time to play up and do a double posting. Hence the copy further down, which I am not allowed to delete.
- interfixus 11y ago
  You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.
reddotX 11y ago
Ubuntu SDK IDE on a Nexus4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445189
userbinator 11y ago
It's not recent; this developer-user split has been growing for a few years now: http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html ...and RMS predicted this almost 20 years ago: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html I think the rise of P2P, file sharing, and the openness of the Internet in the last decade significantly narrowed the developer-user gap; and it's been growing since then, motivated by corporations' desire to maintain control over their users.
- ohthehugemanate 11y ago
  > motivated by corporations' desire to maintain control over their users. I think that's only one factor, and not a majority one. Most users don't want to have to deal with "how it works". They want a simple, easy to use tool that works reliably... And they want to call someone to "fix it" when it "breaks". That's how it works with plumbing, cars, landline phones, stereo components, televisions, and all the electronics they've ever used. The exceptions are computers and some smartphones, which can present cryptic error messages, have weird things in their settings, and generally make a "dumb user" feel out of their element. Think about the confusion users feel when confronted with a funny noise in their car. "I'm not a mechanic, what does that noise mean?" is no different from "I'm not a computer person, what does that error mean?" What's more, the meaning of the question is not "what, mechanically/electrically, is at fault?" It is "how much time/money will it cost to get it fixed?" It's not just a small preference, either - the height of luxury are "push button" services that "just work". Go to a high end hotel, and your room phone has just one button. Top end consumer products of all sorts struggle to be an easy-to-use "appliance". A dumbed down user interface without developer tools is user preference, it's status, it's customer comfort and pride, all tied into one. So 99% of companies end up designing their interfaces like that hotel phone: http://salestores.com/stores/images/images_747/IPN330091.jpg http://salestores.com/stores/images/images_747/IPN330091.jpg IMO the most impressive thing about OSX is how well it supports both audiences: it feels like a push-button, high luxury, comfortable, easy device to my mother. But under the hood there are great logs and a solid BSD-based operating system model. It comes prepackaged with a lot of developer tools, hidden in a place where I would look right away, but my mother would never notice. Sure, some companies use software to limit and control their customers (cough cough Sony), usually with sharp legal/lobbyist teeth to enforce that control. But 99% of companies out there just want to make their users feel comfortable, high status, and competent to use their device. While I agree with RMS that this split is inevitable, I don't believe it's about control. It's about two distinct market segments: auto enthusiasts who want control over the torque settings in their high end car, and people who just want a car that fucking works. Chefs who want sector-by-sector control over their oven's heating profile, and people who just want to be able to cook a fucking roast without burning it.
throwaway13337 11y ago
It's more broad than that. The distinction lies in production versus consumption devices. Tablets and phones are consumption. You can't do any serious work on them - development included. This is why laptops and computers have stuck around in spite of the proliferation of cheap, tiny, elegant consumption devices. So no, I don't think laptops and computers will go away for non-nerds, just for people who don't produce anything.
- nailer 11y ago
  You can create content on tablets, and some of it is excellent content. Development isn't done on tablets because the input devices we have to make code are limited to a keyboard, and most people think text files are code, rather than a serialisation/deserialisation format for an AST. You could easily build an AST with gestures and speech rather than tapping buttons, and I think in 10-20 years time that's how we'll make software.
  - Marazan 11y ago
    Plain text files are an incredibly powerful way of "storing ASTs", the advantages are far too numerous to list. The primary one being complete and total interoparability with all other tools that accept plain text files. I will bet you £100 that we won't be programming by speech and gestures in even 25 years time as the disadvantages are enormous.
    - nailer 11y ago
      Not saying we shouldn't store software as text. Just saying we don't need to make software with text.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Get a better editor - one that lets you operate on semantic units. And/or get a better programming language - one that lets you operate on code as AST.
venomsnake 11y ago
>are computers doomed to be an expensive tool for few "nerd" ? No. Because of the Glorious PC Master Race - mods, trainers, hacks, overlays etc - these all need dev and root access. Btw- game modding, cracking, save game editing etc - are the best gateway drugs towards full blown IT career.
- matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  Word. I remember using a hex editor to alter a saved game. It would be decades before I learned exactly how hex works.
miguelrochefort 11y ago
All of this will disappear within the next 5 years, as the distinction between programming and consumption narrows down. It seems like a vast majority of software developers, consciously or not, do not wish for software development to improve beyond a certain point as they fear it would become too accessible and therefore lower the value of their skills. The truth is that we actively make programming as difficult as possible, and everybody loses. I can understand that writing code as text would make sense 50 years ago, but there is no excuse for this today. Consumer UI is now reaching the 3rd dimension with AR and VR, while software development is stuck in the 1st dimension. A long linear piece of string. It is difficult to believe that those who have the power to create great consumer UX are completely blind to improving their own. Software development has some of the worst UX ever. The solution to all of those issues has been known for a while, and is dead simple to understand. We need to create a new communication platform, powered by ideas from logic programming and the semantic web. Think of it as 2 huge semantic knowledge graphs, the first describing the real state of the world, the second describing the ideal state of the world. Build a UI on top of it (which should feel more like a graph-oriented Excel than RDF/Prolog) to let people, agents and IoT devices communicate "what is" and "what should be". Then, all it takes is an inference algorithm that can match providers with seekers, get them to commit to some set of world changes (through some sort of contract), and let people manage and track the commitments/tasks they're expected to get done. That's it, that replaces 80% of software needs. Thank you very much. Knowledge Graph -> Semantic Marketplace -> Smart Contracts -> Task Management
- te0006 11y ago
  Interesting ideas (even though your prediction regarding the next five years seems rather... bold). Where is this vision sketched in some more detail? Any links?
  - miguelrochefort 11y ago
    Half of what I ever said online is about this. Somehow, I never got to write a detailed description of the vision. Perhaps I should take this opportunity to make that happen.
minikites 11y ago
I always find that comments like this are doom and gloom and never celebratory that we might reach a point where computers are finally stable and secure enough to be treated like appliances. The first automobiles required dozens of steps just to start the engine, did people back then lament the difference between "cars" and "mechanics' cars"?
golergka 11y ago
Have you met an average user? The mandatory updates, lack of permissions and sandboxing are only a good thing for a user with typical computer literacy level. Hell, even lack of window management in iOS/Android systems is making UX much more easier to understand for majority of users I know. My granddad, who was an excellent mechanical engineer, have been using computers for the last 20 years, and he still struggles with click/double-click distinction.
- userbinator 11y ago
  The mandatory updates, lack of permissions and sandboxing are only a good thing for a user with typical computer literacy level. Only if you want to keep them illiterate, which companies are more than happy to do since it means they can be more easily persuaded and dependent consumers.
  - maccard 11y ago
    People have had 25 years (Wild guess) to become literate, and they haven't. What makes you think that's going to change?
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It probably isn't if the attitudes in present IT world continue. But it doesn't have to be this way - about the only thing needed to fix this situation is to create an expectation that yes, you have to sit down and spend 5 minutes learning before you can use this stuff effectively. Somehow nobody complains that cars, or microwave ovens are too complicated. Everybody knows they have to learn how to use them - either through a training course or just by reading a manual.
      - mobiuscog 11y ago
        Most people really do not care enough to learn past a 'just use it' detail. Are my parents or family interested in password managers ? Heck no... why should they, because the browser will remember stuff for them. Permissions ? You have to be joking... they want to read their email or draw a picture. Computers are there to make life easy - they're convenience tools (for the mass market). If people have to understand them more than switch them on a press a few buttons, they've failed. It's not the IT world... for years, we were outcast as geeks and nerds (they were insults in the past). It's that the average person doesn't want (or need) to know about this. How many people service their own car ?
jasonkester 11y ago
You couldn't really code on an Atari 2600 or a Super Nintendo either, but all of us somehow turned out OK. I wouldn't sweat it.
darreld 11y ago
I think this split is going to get worse, especially in the Apple ecosystem. Their apparent desire is that the iPad and Pro are the computer replacement but there isn't (or will anytime soon) a way to create applications for those platforms from that (iOS) environment. Their, admittedly market-speak, statements on stage hint that they would like to see the the tablets/phones replace desktops for the larger userbase. Odd times.
ssatta 11y ago
This. It paints a unsettling picture for the future of general purpose computing.
ultramancool 11y ago
What do you mean? I pick up my Android phone and I've got an app that gives me a python shell, "terminal ide" which includes tons of cli developer tools like a C compiler and various editors, a full debian install I use for more secure SSH (using real openssh) and development and even some operations on various servers. There are full out Java IDEs on Android that you can install even. So here's just a few ways you can code on Android: QPython: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qpyplus&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qp... AIDE (Java): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl... Terminal IDE: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr... If all else fails, just deploy debian with Linux Deploy: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linuxdeploy&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linu... If desktops become more expensive, it'll just mean people are more motivated to make tools like this. Android phones and tablets are basically treated as cheap commodities and there's an extremely competitive market for them, if anything, the entry price has gone down. Now, admittedly I'm not sure how this situation is on iOS, but maybe someone could link similar tools on there?
- gberger 11y ago
  Sure, but how productive are you when coding on your phone vs on your desktop?
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    There's definitely a productivity hit, but it's also not the kind of thing that isolates people. For the cost of a cheap BT keyboard you can be fairly productive using just a tablet, even a phone maybe. If you have a TV and use casting, a phone could do quite well.
  - simonh 11y ago
    The contention wasn't that coding on a phone or tablet isn't productive, it was that you can't do it. I love Pythonista on my iPad, and the latest version makes coding on my phone surprisingly feasible. I wrote a version of snake on my 6+ with my kids.
thoth 11y ago
I was a teen in the mid 1980s when computers were too expensive. The situation today is orders of magnitude better, it isn't really comparable at all. For one thing, a Raspberry Pi is more powerful than the Sinclair ZX-81, Apple IIe, or Atari 400/800 I had access to back then, and much cheaper.

by siscia 11y ago

chx 11y ago

Here's my blogpost on this from 5.5 years ago http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom.html http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom.html

cm-t 11y ago

Well, because we are on an ubuntu thread, I will link you those just for the fun ;) http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/developers http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/developers https://plus.google.com/u/0/105864202742705090915/posts/jNvZ281GEeh https://plus.google.com/u/0/105864202742705090915/posts/jNvZ...

omaranto 11y ago

What do you mean you "cannot" code on tablets and smartphones? There are nice interpreters and compilers in the official app stores for major mobiles OS, aren't there? I've used Python on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Also J, Ocaml, some dialects of Lisp, C# and Ruby, that I can remember now (each language on at least one of those OSes, sometimes more than one). Not to mention these devices all come with web browsers which means at the very least you can use JavaScript (I've done at least one Project Euler question on an iPod Touch in CoffeeScript standing in line at the bank.) The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.)

lossolo 11y ago
I tried to code on smartphone, never again. I am x times more productive on desktop.
- omaranto 11y ago
  Absolutely! Programming is much more comfortable with a physical keyboard. I wasn't suggesting coding on a phone is ideal, just that it is possible.
- jshevek 11y ago
  Edit: Just realized you might have meant _on_ the phone as in 'using the on screen keyboard'. Ug. That would be truly awful. During one weekend in which my only options were android devices, I was pleasantly surprised by the packages available in termux. With tmux, git, and ssh installed, I mounted the tablet at the right height and connected a quality keyboard via usb. I actually forgot that I was coding on a tablet! The phone experience was far more sensitive to maintaining good posture throughout, but being strongly incentivized to keep good posture actually made the experience more pleasant in a way. However, this particular phone was around 1280x720 I believe - seeing individual pixels again, and being pixel-limited (not physical size limited) in the use of panes in tmux were the only facets I found truly unpleasant. I'm eager to try coding with a high res VR headset.
- onion2k 11y ago
  I've recently started using Termux on my phone with a bluetooth keyboard - I'm as productive as I would be doing dev over SSH. All the tools I'd use on a server are there (node, git, nano, etc). I've written a small API server with it and it wasn't a disaster. Admittedly I'm more productive when I'm on my laptop with Atom and a couple of monitors, but if that isn't an option I can still do work. It's a bonus rather than an alternative.
siscia 11y ago
Well of course you can technically code on a smartphone or tablets, I simply meant that is absolutely not practical.
userbinator 11y ago
Those are "second-class" or even "third-class" citizens in the ecosystem. Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? That's what makes the traditional, document-centric, PC ecosystem so powerful. While being able to play around with Project Euler can be fun, it amounts to "I can run a Turing-machine simulator" and doesn't represent anything more than a tiny fraction of what people want to do with computers when they say they want to "code". You may as well be playing one of the numerous puzzle games that involve much of the same concepts. To use your iPod Touch as an example, if it were more like a traditional desktop computer, you would also be able to do things like write an app to manage your music playlists. The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.) Not surprising if it's a Windows tablet based on the PC architecture - those are far closer to the traditional desktop than iDevices and Androids. If by C# compiler you're referring to the one that comes with the .NET framework, that's been there since the first versions; pity it's not so well known with MS trying to push VS as hard as possible...
- Sephr 11y ago
  > Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? Yes, you can. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui
interfixus 11y ago
You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.
- interfixus 11y ago
  Apparently, you can't really do anything on a tablet or phone. Or at least I can't. My phone app chose this particular comment as a nice time to play up and do a double posting. Hence the copy further down, which I am not allowed to delete.
interfixus 11y ago
You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.

reddotX 11y ago

Ubuntu SDK IDE on a Nexus4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11445189

userbinator 11y ago

It's not recent; this developer-user split has been growing for a few years now: http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html ...and RMS predicted this almost 20 years ago: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html I think the rise of P2P, file sharing, and the openness of the Internet in the last decade significantly narrowed the developer-user gap; and it's been growing since then, motivated by corporations' desire to maintain control over their users.

ohthehugemanate 11y ago
> motivated by corporations' desire to maintain control over their users. I think that's only one factor, and not a majority one. Most users don't want to have to deal with "how it works". They want a simple, easy to use tool that works reliably... And they want to call someone to "fix it" when it "breaks". That's how it works with plumbing, cars, landline phones, stereo components, televisions, and all the electronics they've ever used. The exceptions are computers and some smartphones, which can present cryptic error messages, have weird things in their settings, and generally make a "dumb user" feel out of their element. Think about the confusion users feel when confronted with a funny noise in their car. "I'm not a mechanic, what does that noise mean?" is no different from "I'm not a computer person, what does that error mean?" What's more, the meaning of the question is not "what, mechanically/electrically, is at fault?" It is "how much time/money will it cost to get it fixed?" It's not just a small preference, either - the height of luxury are "push button" services that "just work". Go to a high end hotel, and your room phone has just one button. Top end consumer products of all sorts struggle to be an easy-to-use "appliance". A dumbed down user interface without developer tools is user preference, it's status, it's customer comfort and pride, all tied into one. So 99% of companies end up designing their interfaces like that hotel phone: http://salestores.com/stores/images/images_747/IPN330091.jpg http://salestores.com/stores/images/images_747/IPN330091.jpg IMO the most impressive thing about OSX is how well it supports both audiences: it feels like a push-button, high luxury, comfortable, easy device to my mother. But under the hood there are great logs and a solid BSD-based operating system model. It comes prepackaged with a lot of developer tools, hidden in a place where I would look right away, but my mother would never notice. Sure, some companies use software to limit and control their customers (cough cough Sony), usually with sharp legal/lobbyist teeth to enforce that control. But 99% of companies out there just want to make their users feel comfortable, high status, and competent to use their device. While I agree with RMS that this split is inevitable, I don't believe it's about control. It's about two distinct market segments: auto enthusiasts who want control over the torque settings in their high end car, and people who just want a car that fucking works. Chefs who want sector-by-sector control over their oven's heating profile, and people who just want to be able to cook a fucking roast without burning it.

throwaway13337 11y ago

It's more broad than that. The distinction lies in production versus consumption devices. Tablets and phones are consumption. You can't do any serious work on them - development included. This is why laptops and computers have stuck around in spite of the proliferation of cheap, tiny, elegant consumption devices. So no, I don't think laptops and computers will go away for non-nerds, just for people who don't produce anything.

nailer 11y ago
You can create content on tablets, and some of it is excellent content. Development isn't done on tablets because the input devices we have to make code are limited to a keyboard, and most people think text files are code, rather than a serialisation/deserialisation format for an AST. You could easily build an AST with gestures and speech rather than tapping buttons, and I think in 10-20 years time that's how we'll make software.
- Marazan 11y ago
  Plain text files are an incredibly powerful way of "storing ASTs", the advantages are far too numerous to list. The primary one being complete and total interoparability with all other tools that accept plain text files. I will bet you £100 that we won't be programming by speech and gestures in even 25 years time as the disadvantages are enormous.
  - nailer 11y ago
    Not saying we shouldn't store software as text. Just saying we don't need to make software with text.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Get a better editor - one that lets you operate on semantic units. And/or get a better programming language - one that lets you operate on code as AST.

venomsnake 11y ago

>are computers doomed to be an expensive tool for few "nerd" ? No. Because of the Glorious PC Master Race - mods, trainers, hacks, overlays etc - these all need dev and root access. Btw- game modding, cracking, save game editing etc - are the best gateway drugs towards full blown IT career.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago
Word. I remember using a hex editor to alter a saved game. It would be decades before I learned exactly how hex works.

miguelrochefort 11y ago

All of this will disappear within the next 5 years, as the distinction between programming and consumption narrows down. It seems like a vast majority of software developers, consciously or not, do not wish for software development to improve beyond a certain point as they fear it would become too accessible and therefore lower the value of their skills. The truth is that we actively make programming as difficult as possible, and everybody loses. I can understand that writing code as text would make sense 50 years ago, but there is no excuse for this today. Consumer UI is now reaching the 3rd dimension with AR and VR, while software development is stuck in the 1st dimension. A long linear piece of string. It is difficult to believe that those who have the power to create great consumer UX are completely blind to improving their own. Software development has some of the worst UX ever. The solution to all of those issues has been known for a while, and is dead simple to understand. We need to create a new communication platform, powered by ideas from logic programming and the semantic web. Think of it as 2 huge semantic knowledge graphs, the first describing the real state of the world, the second describing the ideal state of the world. Build a UI on top of it (which should feel more like a graph-oriented Excel than RDF/Prolog) to let people, agents and IoT devices communicate "what is" and "what should be". Then, all it takes is an inference algorithm that can match providers with seekers, get them to commit to some set of world changes (through some sort of contract), and let people manage and track the commitments/tasks they're expected to get done. That's it, that replaces 80% of software needs. Thank you very much. Knowledge Graph -> Semantic Marketplace -> Smart Contracts -> Task Management

te0006 11y ago
Interesting ideas (even though your prediction regarding the next five years seems rather... bold). Where is this vision sketched in some more detail? Any links?
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  Half of what I ever said online is about this. Somehow, I never got to write a detailed description of the vision. Perhaps I should take this opportunity to make that happen.

minikites 11y ago

I always find that comments like this are doom and gloom and never celebratory that we might reach a point where computers are finally stable and secure enough to be treated like appliances. The first automobiles required dozens of steps just to start the engine, did people back then lament the difference between "cars" and "mechanics' cars"?

golergka 11y ago

Have you met an average user? The mandatory updates, lack of permissions and sandboxing are only a good thing for a user with typical computer literacy level. Hell, even lack of window management in iOS/Android systems is making UX much more easier to understand for majority of users I know. My granddad, who was an excellent mechanical engineer, have been using computers for the last 20 years, and he still struggles with click/double-click distinction.

userbinator 11y ago
The mandatory updates, lack of permissions and sandboxing are only a good thing for a user with typical computer literacy level. Only if you want to keep them illiterate, which companies are more than happy to do since it means they can be more easily persuaded and dependent consumers.
- maccard 11y ago
  People have had 25 years (Wild guess) to become literate, and they haven't. What makes you think that's going to change?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It probably isn't if the attitudes in present IT world continue. But it doesn't have to be this way - about the only thing needed to fix this situation is to create an expectation that yes, you have to sit down and spend 5 minutes learning before you can use this stuff effectively. Somehow nobody complains that cars, or microwave ovens are too complicated. Everybody knows they have to learn how to use them - either through a training course or just by reading a manual.
    - mobiuscog 11y ago
      Most people really do not care enough to learn past a 'just use it' detail. Are my parents or family interested in password managers ? Heck no... why should they, because the browser will remember stuff for them. Permissions ? You have to be joking... they want to read their email or draw a picture. Computers are there to make life easy - they're convenience tools (for the mass market). If people have to understand them more than switch them on a press a few buttons, they've failed. It's not the IT world... for years, we were outcast as geeks and nerds (they were insults in the past). It's that the average person doesn't want (or need) to know about this. How many people service their own car ?

jasonkester 11y ago

You couldn't really code on an Atari 2600 or a Super Nintendo either, but all of us somehow turned out OK. I wouldn't sweat it.

darreld 11y ago

I think this split is going to get worse, especially in the Apple ecosystem. Their apparent desire is that the iPad and Pro are the computer replacement but there isn't (or will anytime soon) a way to create applications for those platforms from that (iOS) environment. Their, admittedly market-speak, statements on stage hint that they would like to see the the tablets/phones replace desktops for the larger userbase. Odd times.

ssatta 11y ago

This. It paints a unsettling picture for the future of general purpose computing.

ultramancool 11y ago

What do you mean? I pick up my Android phone and I've got an app that gives me a python shell, "terminal ide" which includes tons of cli developer tools like a C compiler and various editors, a full debian install I use for more secure SSH (using real openssh) and development and even some operations on various servers. There are full out Java IDEs on Android that you can install even. So here's just a few ways you can code on Android: QPython: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qpyplus&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qp... AIDE (Java): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl... Terminal IDE: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr... If all else fails, just deploy debian with Linux Deploy: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linuxdeploy&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linu... If desktops become more expensive, it'll just mean people are more motivated to make tools like this. Android phones and tablets are basically treated as cheap commodities and there's an extremely competitive market for them, if anything, the entry price has gone down. Now, admittedly I'm not sure how this situation is on iOS, but maybe someone could link similar tools on there?

gberger 11y ago
Sure, but how productive are you when coding on your phone vs on your desktop?
- ultramancool 11y ago
  There's definitely a productivity hit, but it's also not the kind of thing that isolates people. For the cost of a cheap BT keyboard you can be fairly productive using just a tablet, even a phone maybe. If you have a TV and use casting, a phone could do quite well.
- simonh 11y ago
  The contention wasn't that coding on a phone or tablet isn't productive, it was that you can't do it. I love Pythonista on my iPad, and the latest version makes coding on my phone surprisingly feasible. I wrote a version of snake on my 6+ with my kids.

thoth 11y ago

I was a teen in the mid 1980s when computers were too expensive. The situation today is orders of magnitude better, it isn't really comparable at all. For one thing, a Raspberry Pi is more powerful than the Sinclair ZX-81, Apple IIe, or Atari 400/800 I had access to back then, and much cheaper.