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When I was a kid, I was frustrated for most of the adults can't use the computer so our society is very inefficient at daily life. I was thinking, since our ge

by ezoe 10y ago

When I was a kid, I was frustrated for most of the adults can't use the computer so our society is very inefficient at daily life. I was thinking, since our generation has affordable personal computers, when our generation become adults, the world will finally embrace the efficiency of computer where everything is computer-friendly and everyone can write code. I was wrong. The birth of so called "smartphone" made everyone dumb. The smartphone does not encourage its user to write code or text. They mostly consume the information provided by a handful of people who can use efficient input device, the keyboard. My generation and the next generation were infected by the smartphone. Those hand-sized, touch-screen pathetic computer is the only computer most people ever use nowadays. I refuse to own a smartphone. Since our society become so smartphone-friendly, not owning a smartphone makes me really inefficient at daily life. But I don't want to own a computer which tried so hard to prevent me to replace OS, modify the software, writing code and text. What a dystopian world I live.

bighi 10y ago
> I refuse to own a smartphone. That is your loss. You're blaming the tool instead of the people. And then you renounce said tool, when it could be used (as the tool it is) to improve your life and your work. To create greater things. Before the smartphones, people were made dumb by the TV. And before that, by the radio, and before that it was something else, and something else. People that want to passively waste their time could always do that, and will keep doing.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  A better comparison would be with a TV that doubles as your main communication tool and work instrument while it serves you addictive contents, ads, and spies on you. Rings any bell?
- 3131s 10y ago
  > That is your loss. There is no loss. Everything a smart phone can do, a laptop can do better. All a smart phone does is keep people bound to their online lives in an unhealthy way -- constantly beeping at you, notifying you of pointless shit, and spying on you. No thanks. I don't own any phone, but if I did it would be a dumb phone with week-long battery life.
  - marsrover 10y ago
    It can't fit in your pocket better.
floatboth 10y ago
Come on, you're exaggerating. > tried so hard to prevent me to replace OS, modify the software, writing code and text It's pretty easy to install a new OS on a typical Android phone. 1 million registered LineageOS installations already, many many millions of CyanogenMod installations before that. How do smartphones try to prevent you from writing code and text? Apple even made this: https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ For the iPad, of course, because phones are small… but not impossible to use for code. I have edited websites over SFTP with https://textasticapp.com/iphone.html https://textasticapp.com/iphone.html on an iPhone 4 back in the day! Also don't forget http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ And you can make Android apps on an Android phone: http://www.android-ide.com http://www.android-ide.com Honestly the worry about "omg smartphones are turning everyone into consumers who don't create anything" is ridiculous. People write blog posts, edit photos and videos on smartphones a lot. A LOT. > a handful of people who can use efficient input device, the keyboard I really like my mechanical keyboard with blank keycaps, but I do type a lot on my phone's onscreen keyboard as well, and it is pretty efficient!
- digi_owl 10y ago
  that is highly dependent on how close to "flagship" your brand and model of phone is. For every S7 (or S8 these days) there will be 100s and 100s of cheap ones sold that nobody over at XDA or similar with ever grace with an alternative firmware.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    Like me, I have a "MyPhone" and there appear to be no ROMs for it, nor do automated rooting apps do the trick. There's so much crapware on my phone such that the home screen has been taken over by advertisments that I can't close.
digi_owl 10y ago
Writing code, outside of spaghetti BASIC and similar, is a full time job. It requires hours and hours of thinking and planning. People already have full time jobs, sometimes two or more. The last thing they want is another, likely unpaid one, when they come home and sit down before the computer.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  This is the biggest mistaken belief of the programming industry. Where we're headed is multi-level architectures. At the bottom is what you think of as "all programming". It's low level code, with manual deployment, using a wide range of fairly arcane tools. You need to be a professional to do it. What is slowly emerging, which you suggest is impossible, is a layer on top of that. It is written in highly constrained code. You can't import random libraries, and you can't write spaghetti code, because you are writing in a highly constrained DSL. It's still real code. It's still a Turing machine. But you are working within a sandbox that your professional software engineering colleague built for you. Most of us software pros don't think about development this way. We think we're supposed to be releasing finished apps to end users. But 20 years from now, we'll think of our job as releasing libraries for "non-programmers" to use. DSLs that are foolproof, which end users will string together using simple function calls and literals and nothing else. Languages in which it's very difficult to express broken ideas. There's no reason the marketing team can't write this file: post("miami", "Bienvenido a Miami!") image("miami", "http://static.flickr.com...") paragraph("miami", "We've gotten more requests for a Miami location than the rest of our...") Well, there is a reason. It's almost certain that the programmers down the hall, like you, don't believe that a marketing professional could handle the "hours of thinking and planning" required to write that code. But again, they are all mistaken. Any smart, computer-savvy person could write that code after a few minutes of instruction. But first you'd have to build that API, and a realtime preview, that is editable from a nice simple web app. You could do the "hours of thinking and planning" so that your colleagues could write the high level business code. That's where this is all going. There will be a lot of programmers that work inside a sandbox like that, a few hours a week. Most programmers will work like that. And there will be a smaller number of seasoned pros will maintain those sandboxes.
72deluxe 10y ago
I do have a smartphone but oddly he is mildly correct that they really aren't smart. You have to spend ages on them to do anything. It is odd that computers are meant to work for us but we spend such a long time using them and working on them, in a huge perpetual cycle of production and consumption cantered around the computer itself, particularly in the software industry. Odd.
nkristoffersen 10y ago
Ironically the smartphone brings proper computing to everyone's fingertips. Hell I use my iPhone as a SSH terminal, or even a hotspot for my laptop when programming away from wifi. The Information Age would be a dud without constant access to said information from anywhere for anyone. The smartphone has also made it super easy for the average person to enjoy the fruits of programmers labor via app stores. Overall it has been a positive for the world.
s_dev 10y ago
> The smartphone does not encourage its user to write code or text. What about people who write iOS or Android Apps for those phones. The device itself isn't well suited to writing code.

by ezoe 10y ago

bighi 10y ago

> I refuse to own a smartphone. That is your loss. You're blaming the tool instead of the people. And then you renounce said tool, when it could be used (as the tool it is) to improve your life and your work. To create greater things. Before the smartphones, people were made dumb by the TV. And before that, by the radio, and before that it was something else, and something else. People that want to passively waste their time could always do that, and will keep doing.

eeZah7Ux 10y ago
A better comparison would be with a TV that doubles as your main communication tool and work instrument while it serves you addictive contents, ads, and spies on you. Rings any bell?
3131s 10y ago
> That is your loss. There is no loss. Everything a smart phone can do, a laptop can do better. All a smart phone does is keep people bound to their online lives in an unhealthy way -- constantly beeping at you, notifying you of pointless shit, and spying on you. No thanks. I don't own any phone, but if I did it would be a dumb phone with week-long battery life.
- marsrover 10y ago
  It can't fit in your pocket better.

floatboth 10y ago

Come on, you're exaggerating. > tried so hard to prevent me to replace OS, modify the software, writing code and text It's pretty easy to install a new OS on a typical Android phone. 1 million registered LineageOS installations already, many many millions of CyanogenMod installations before that. How do smartphones try to prevent you from writing code and text? Apple even made this: https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ For the iPad, of course, because phones are small… but not impossible to use for code. I have edited websites over SFTP with https://textasticapp.com/iphone.html https://textasticapp.com/iphone.html on an iPhone 4 back in the day! Also don't forget http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ And you can make Android apps on an Android phone: http://www.android-ide.com http://www.android-ide.com Honestly the worry about "omg smartphones are turning everyone into consumers who don't create anything" is ridiculous. People write blog posts, edit photos and videos on smartphones a lot. A LOT. > a handful of people who can use efficient input device, the keyboard I really like my mechanical keyboard with blank keycaps, but I do type a lot on my phone's onscreen keyboard as well, and it is pretty efficient!

digi_owl 10y ago
that is highly dependent on how close to "flagship" your brand and model of phone is. For every S7 (or S8 these days) there will be 100s and 100s of cheap ones sold that nobody over at XDA or similar with ever grace with an alternative firmware.
- ue_ 10y ago
  Like me, I have a "MyPhone" and there appear to be no ROMs for it, nor do automated rooting apps do the trick. There's so much crapware on my phone such that the home screen has been taken over by advertisments that I can't close.

digi_owl 10y ago

Writing code, outside of spaghetti BASIC and similar, is a full time job. It requires hours and hours of thinking and planning. People already have full time jobs, sometimes two or more. The last thing they want is another, likely unpaid one, when they come home and sit down before the computer.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
This is the biggest mistaken belief of the programming industry. Where we're headed is multi-level architectures. At the bottom is what you think of as "all programming". It's low level code, with manual deployment, using a wide range of fairly arcane tools. You need to be a professional to do it. What is slowly emerging, which you suggest is impossible, is a layer on top of that. It is written in highly constrained code. You can't import random libraries, and you can't write spaghetti code, because you are writing in a highly constrained DSL. It's still real code. It's still a Turing machine. But you are working within a sandbox that your professional software engineering colleague built for you. Most of us software pros don't think about development this way. We think we're supposed to be releasing finished apps to end users. But 20 years from now, we'll think of our job as releasing libraries for "non-programmers" to use. DSLs that are foolproof, which end users will string together using simple function calls and literals and nothing else. Languages in which it's very difficult to express broken ideas. There's no reason the marketing team can't write this file: post("miami", "Bienvenido a Miami!") image("miami", "http://static.flickr.com...") paragraph("miami", "We've gotten more requests for a Miami location than the rest of our...") Well, there is a reason. It's almost certain that the programmers down the hall, like you, don't believe that a marketing professional could handle the "hours of thinking and planning" required to write that code. But again, they are all mistaken. Any smart, computer-savvy person could write that code after a few minutes of instruction. But first you'd have to build that API, and a realtime preview, that is editable from a nice simple web app. You could do the "hours of thinking and planning" so that your colleagues could write the high level business code. That's where this is all going. There will be a lot of programmers that work inside a sandbox like that, a few hours a week. Most programmers will work like that. And there will be a smaller number of seasoned pros will maintain those sandboxes.

72deluxe 10y ago

I do have a smartphone but oddly he is mildly correct that they really aren't smart. You have to spend ages on them to do anything. It is odd that computers are meant to work for us but we spend such a long time using them and working on them, in a huge perpetual cycle of production and consumption cantered around the computer itself, particularly in the software industry. Odd.

nkristoffersen 10y ago

Ironically the smartphone brings proper computing to everyone's fingertips. Hell I use my iPhone as a SSH terminal, or even a hotspot for my laptop when programming away from wifi. The Information Age would be a dud without constant access to said information from anywhere for anyone. The smartphone has also made it super easy for the average person to enjoy the fruits of programmers labor via app stores. Overall it has been a positive for the world.

s_dev 10y ago

> The smartphone does not encourage its user to write code or text. What about people who write iOS or Android Apps for those phones. The device itself isn't well suited to writing code.