I agree that plenty of people who are not developers use those tools but I also don’t think the lift of installing homebrew or macports is going to be too much

I agree that plenty of people who are not developers use those tools but I also don’t think the lift of installing homebrew or macports is going to be too much for people who are already smart enough to run those scripts in the first place. Like you said, it just requires a little pointer, which hopefully people will be happy to provide. The approval thing is valid, but I feel like that is likely going to be an issue that becomes more and more common as Apple moves to move more and more tools and utilities to the Xcode tools download anyway. Support/approval teams are just going to need to adjust to that reality, even if it’s an annoyance because I don’t see things shifting back, at least with Apple. But issues of approval aside, I honestly think back of myself as a teenager, installing fink and Macports and figuring it all out as I went along and I wouldn’t have called myself a developer then. I was just a girl who wanted to tinker with stuff. I think we (and I’m not talking about you specifically but the more general “we” as in the types of people that frequent HN) often underestimate the abilities of our non-dev brethren. We overestimate how much users know too, of course, but I do think we often slot people who have shown that they have the capabilities and desire to solve a problem into a “lesser” box just because they don’t carry the title of developer. And that affects those users too, who then assume they can’t do something when their own track record proves otherwise.