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That world still exists and many of the users of this site live in it. I program my computer all the time, from scripts all the way up to whole apps and service

by api 6y ago

That world still exists and many of the users of this site live in it. I program my computer all the time, from scripts all the way up to whole apps and services. I run a company that writes software. What happened is that computing became popular, vastly increasing the user base, and the majority of these new users didn't want to program any more than the average driver wants to work on the engine of their own car. They just wanted a computer to be a gadget they could use to do specific things: online interaction, spreadsheets, games, word processing, etc. Is that bad? I don't do anything with my car but drive it (and rarely these days!). Am I missing out on the car experience? Today's hobbyist computer market is larger than it was back in the good old days. We have an embarrassment of riches from cheap hardware (secondhand laptops that can run Linux are virtually free and there are dozens of <$50 Linux SBCs) to vast quantities of open source software available on aggregators like GitHub. There are vastly more creators than ever before. There are just orders of magnitude more passive casual users than those.

ryukafalz 6y ago
I really don't think that world does still exist, at least not quite in the same way. Even on today's Linux systems, there's a huge barrier between using the system and changing something about it. I wrote a little bit about this a while back: https://jfred.dreamwidth.org/479.html https://jfred.dreamwidth.org/479.html Suffice to say, I think many more people would make small changes that make their lives easier if if were easy and straightforward to do so as a user. Right now, it's not.
- api 6y ago
  I think the answer to this part of it is at the bottom of that rant: the increase in complexity. The barrier you describe exists because there is so much damn complexity in modern systems, much of it unnecessary.
qsort 6y ago
On one hand I'm completely with you that acting like programming is "an echo of a different world" is just romanticizing a past that never existed, but I can't help but feel there is some (and only some) truth to it. A car is a means of transportation, the fact that you can tweak the engine is tangential to its function, a computer is useful because, and not in spite, of its universality. There isn't any logical way of using a computer that isn't programming, but ironically, it's often a mere afterthought in commercial products. To continue the obligatory car analogy, writing complex software in a full development environment is the equivalent of tweaking the engine. It's a job for professionals and I don't expect the average user to be able to do it. But writing a simple script for the system interpreter that wires premade components is more like changing your oil or changing a tire, it's really baffling that most people can't do it.

by api 6y ago

ryukafalz 6y ago

I really don't think that world does still exist, at least not quite in the same way. Even on today's Linux systems, there's a huge barrier between using the system and changing something about it. I wrote a little bit about this a while back: https://jfred.dreamwidth.org/479.html https://jfred.dreamwidth.org/479.html Suffice to say, I think many more people would make small changes that make their lives easier if if were easy and straightforward to do so as a user. Right now, it's not.

api 6y ago
I think the answer to this part of it is at the bottom of that rant: the increase in complexity. The barrier you describe exists because there is so much damn complexity in modern systems, much of it unnecessary.

qsort 6y ago

On one hand I'm completely with you that acting like programming is "an echo of a different world" is just romanticizing a past that never existed, but I can't help but feel there is some (and only some) truth to it. A car is a means of transportation, the fact that you can tweak the engine is tangential to its function, a computer is useful because, and not in spite, of its universality. There isn't any logical way of using a computer that isn't programming, but ironically, it's often a mere afterthought in commercial products. To continue the obligatory car analogy, writing complex software in a full development environment is the equivalent of tweaking the engine. It's a job for professionals and I don't expect the average user to be able to do it. But writing a simple script for the system interpreter that wires premade components is more like changing your oil or changing a tire, it's really baffling that most people can't do it.