4 ms·

Well said. I blame 2nd coming Jobs (iMac and iPod era) and same period Microsoft for a lot of this as they competed with each other. Usability became more impo

by ethbro 9y ago

Well said. I blame 2nd coming Jobs (iMac and iPod era) and same period Microsoft for a lot of this as they competed with each other. Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. There's a lot to be said for a harder to use computer with a learning curve, but which affords you more power to be a creator instead of a consumer at the end of the curve. I'd go so far as to say that's better for us (as in, all humans).

userbinator 9y ago
More importantly, the ability to write and run your own code easily, of which learning is only part of the process. From that perspective, Apple was closed from almost the beginning, while the PC and various other micros of the time (ZX, C64, etc.) started out open.
- majjam 9y ago
  I found the early macos’ (6,7,8 and 9) incredibly frustrating for this reason. Pc users has dos and qbasic, but other than hypercard, mac didnt seem to have a way into the internals to learn about coding. Stuck in userland.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  The Apple ][ wasn't closed, you could hack away on it just as much as any other 8bit machine of the day. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) it was from the Mac onward life got a bit more challenging.
staticassertion 9y ago
This is really silly to me. Making computers accessible seems like a completely reasonable, sound priority. Yes, computer literacy is something we all need to work towards, but we'll never be in a world where the average person understands PKI, and saying that we should limit accessibility until they do is absurd.
- gregknicholson 9y ago
  Yeah, understanding the internal combustion engine should not be a prerequisite for riding a bus.
  - progval 9y ago
    Most people have at least a vague idea of how a combustion engine works, don't they?
    - gregknicholson 9y ago
      Kids ride buses; I'm pretty sure they don't understand the marvels of engineering they're benefiting from. My point is: it should be possible to use something without fully understanding the minutiae of how it works. We call this “user interface design”. You should be allowed to live in a house without a full understanding of the architectural details that prevent it from falling down.
      - posterboy 9y ago
        I'm sure no single person understands every detail of the diesel engine, arguably nobody so far can solve the Navier-Strokes equation exactly. But even children understand that the car needs fuel and they might now that it has an engine that can break if given the wrong fuel. They could, at least. The fact that there are those who don't only corroborated the fact that there are folks who don't know how ... what was the actual problem? Will be owned by having their traffic captured.
        unexistance 9y ago
        probably this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equati...
- userbinator 9y ago
  but we'll never be in a world where the average person understands PKI 2000 years ago: "we'll never be in a world where the average person can read and write English"
yzmtf2008 9y ago
> Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. Why is this problematic? Why is more people having access to computing a bad thing? This is a dangerous, and (dare I say) elitist opinion. We're seeing positive impact, every day, thanks to the ubiquitously available computing resources. If you'd like to use a computer with a learning curve, use a computer with a learning curve. Don't drag the whole world with you.
- daddosi 9y ago
  The trade of is worth some thought. It takes a lot of effort to cater to intuition. If we put some of that effort into giving the user acces to the tools it should make a better result in the long run. The simple version of how a combustion engine works is inspiring and helps us aperciate the bus. It might be a bit to deep an argument but where do you think intuition comes from? If we design peceaved reality after existing intuition you get a giant feedback loop that calls for ever more unrealistic representations. Mabe an analogy can be had with electronics being mostly paralel processes while we can barely figure out how to implement it in higher languages. Our intuition likes the 1 thing at a time approach.
  - yzmtf2008 9y ago
    I think the idea is that we should cater to intuition, and give everyone the necessary tools to understand and tweak it, but it's not necessary to do good. To the average people, appreciating the bus brings much less utility than being able to take the bus. Should we not have the bus just because people can't appreciate the combustion engine? But then, of course, intuition is more useful for some people. For those people, no one is stopping you from digging into the engine itself. This is really the price discrimination idea applied to utility: offering a cheaper, easier to use interface (taking the bus) means now the bus is useful not only to the engineers, but the passengers as well. The situation about computing is not really that much different. If you want to learn the internal of computers, Gentoo exists, feel free to use it. But should everyone use Gentoo? Not really. I'm probably more proficient in Linux than the average developer, but I don't see the need of using Gentoo myself either. That is not to say we can't do better either. The signature design for SQLAlchemy is leaking abstractions (but in a good way). The average dashboard for a car today is way more complicated than the dashboard of a car 70 years ago. Yet, that's not stopping car ownership to grow. Maybe there's a lesson for us somewhere there as well.

by ethbro 9y ago

userbinator 9y ago

More importantly, the ability to write and run your own code easily, of which learning is only part of the process. From that perspective, Apple was closed from almost the beginning, while the PC and various other micros of the time (ZX, C64, etc.) started out open.

majjam 9y ago
I found the early macos’ (6,7,8 and 9) incredibly frustrating for this reason. Pc users has dos and qbasic, but other than hypercard, mac didnt seem to have a way into the internals to learn about coding. Stuck in userland.
teh_klev 9y ago
The Apple ][ wasn't closed, you could hack away on it just as much as any other 8bit machine of the day. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) it was from the Mac onward life got a bit more challenging.

staticassertion 9y ago

This is really silly to me. Making computers accessible seems like a completely reasonable, sound priority. Yes, computer literacy is something we all need to work towards, but we'll never be in a world where the average person understands PKI, and saying that we should limit accessibility until they do is absurd.

gregknicholson 9y ago
Yeah, understanding the internal combustion engine should not be a prerequisite for riding a bus.
- progval 9y ago
  Most people have at least a vague idea of how a combustion engine works, don't they?
  - gregknicholson 9y ago
    Kids ride buses; I'm pretty sure they don't understand the marvels of engineering they're benefiting from. My point is: it should be possible to use something without fully understanding the minutiae of how it works. We call this “user interface design”. You should be allowed to live in a house without a full understanding of the architectural details that prevent it from falling down.
    - posterboy 9y ago
      I'm sure no single person understands every detail of the diesel engine, arguably nobody so far can solve the Navier-Strokes equation exactly. But even children understand that the car needs fuel and they might now that it has an engine that can break if given the wrong fuel. They could, at least. The fact that there are those who don't only corroborated the fact that there are folks who don't know how ... what was the actual problem? Will be owned by having their traffic captured.
      - unexistance 9y ago
        probably this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equati...
userbinator 9y ago
but we'll never be in a world where the average person understands PKI 2000 years ago: "we'll never be in a world where the average person can read and write English"

yzmtf2008 9y ago

> Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. Why is this problematic? Why is more people having access to computing a bad thing? This is a dangerous, and (dare I say) elitist opinion. We're seeing positive impact, every day, thanks to the ubiquitously available computing resources. If you'd like to use a computer with a learning curve, use a computer with a learning curve. Don't drag the whole world with you.

daddosi 9y ago
The trade of is worth some thought. It takes a lot of effort to cater to intuition. If we put some of that effort into giving the user acces to the tools it should make a better result in the long run. The simple version of how a combustion engine works is inspiring and helps us aperciate the bus. It might be a bit to deep an argument but where do you think intuition comes from? If we design peceaved reality after existing intuition you get a giant feedback loop that calls for ever more unrealistic representations. Mabe an analogy can be had with electronics being mostly paralel processes while we can barely figure out how to implement it in higher languages. Our intuition likes the 1 thing at a time approach.
- yzmtf2008 9y ago
  I think the idea is that we should cater to intuition, and give everyone the necessary tools to understand and tweak it, but it's not necessary to do good. To the average people, appreciating the bus brings much less utility than being able to take the bus. Should we not have the bus just because people can't appreciate the combustion engine? But then, of course, intuition is more useful for some people. For those people, no one is stopping you from digging into the engine itself. This is really the price discrimination idea applied to utility: offering a cheaper, easier to use interface (taking the bus) means now the bus is useful not only to the engineers, but the passengers as well. The situation about computing is not really that much different. If you want to learn the internal of computers, Gentoo exists, feel free to use it. But should everyone use Gentoo? Not really. I'm probably more proficient in Linux than the average developer, but I don't see the need of using Gentoo myself either. That is not to say we can't do better either. The signature design for SQLAlchemy is leaking abstractions (but in a good way). The average dashboard for a car today is way more complicated than the dashboard of a car 70 years ago. Yet, that's not stopping car ownership to grow. Maybe there's a lesson for us somewhere there as well.