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I think there's a difference with Linux, because it's something you own and control and can dive into and see every part of. I hate investing time in proprietar

I think there's a difference with Linux, because it's something you own and control and can dive into and see every part of. I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out. With open source software, simple electronics, old cars, fabrication and woodworking, the time I spend learning feels worthwhile.

rpdillon 3y ago
This is a great point. I sort of detest becoming an expert at proprietary stuff, because I know they'll just change it before long. I've lamented about this elsewhere as modern software creating "permanent amateurs". Even those that want to invest in expertise often find their knowledge outdated in a handful of years, and those that don't want to invest can easily justify it by pointing out this effect.
- lupire 3y ago
  Microsoft, at least before Cloud happened, supported their tech stacks with backward compatibility for decades.
xattt 3y ago
Proprietary or not, tinkering help you develop an intuition of what might be wrong.
- i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
  Yeah I mean, whoever made the original statement is just not an OS engineer.
  - mandeepj 3y ago
    > just not an OS engineer. Or not just an engineer
    - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
      Nah I can believe they'd be a chemical engineer or even a software developer that writes iOS apps or something like that.
      - xattt 3y ago
        I wanted to say steam/power engineer, but even they understand the value of tinkering.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      I know plenty of people with stamps who don't care to fiddle with their OS or change their own oil. People who work on putting things in orbit and beyond, people who build bridges, people who design undersea robots and airplanes. They're most definitely engineers.
      - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
        Yeah fair.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Meanwhile, the article is clear about how proprietary code absolutely prevented the author from understanding why the Wifi and Bluetooth failed with specific apps.
umbra07 3y ago
I fully empathize - and yet, there are benefits from tinkerers/hackers messing around on proprietary hardware/software. Hackintosh - and similar communties - led to projects like Asahi Linux, Nouveau, Panfrost, etc.
dataflow 3y ago
> I think there's a difference with Linux, because it's something you own and control and can dive into and see every part of. I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out. The problem with this approach is then you get a generation of engineers with tunnel vision thinking the One True Way to achieve your goal is the same way your GNU (or whatever) software did it. Invest time in learning your technologies, whatever they are. There's valuable knowledge in proprietary stuff just as there is in OSS.
- ryukoposting 3y ago
  I agree with your point in principle, and yet I installed Ubuntu on my work laptop this January after using Windows professionally for my entire (5 year) career. I've found myself moving in the opposite direction from the person in the root comment, because I find that it's getting harder and harder to find tolerable proprietary software. It feels like everything is glacially slow, laden with ads and tracking, reliant on an internet connection for basic functionality, or some combination of the above.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    "There is valuable knowledge worth learning in the technology" != "this is strictly better software on every axis and you should switch to it for your daily work"
    - WWLink 3y ago
      As someone that learned to program on BSD and shortly thereafter, Mac OS X and Linux.... I honestly don't know how people use Windows machines as a dev environment 24/7. It would drive me mad. Everything's so wonky and weird. Everything from symlinks to file permissions is just backwards and fucky.
      - 76SlashDolphin 3y ago
        Back in the day it was alright because Microsoft gave you a fairly good dev environment in the form of Visual Studio, with the focus of it being squarely on desktop application development instead of tinkering with the system or running web services. It didn't stop people from doing it anyways but it's part of the reason why everything is so janky. Then the web took over and Microsoft tried for ages to make .net and Windows Server work until they realised they can't tune an OS that was never meant for backend development and just put all their focus on WSL. In the year 2024 there is almost no reason to be doing any non-desktop dev in a Windows environment unless it's on WSL. And you get the benefit of having an actually sane window management system and external display handling unlike MacOS, not to mention how nice PowerToys is.
WanderPanda 3y ago
Even this "I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out" is a hard-gained insight. Hackintosh is one of those things that made me understand this. Nothing like spending weeks to get your hackintosh working smoothly with all the hardware just to find out that the next update breaks everything. I've come to see it as a necessary part of the journey
- seec 3y ago
  In my experience, doing a hackintosh actually teaches you that Apple hardware is not that special and macOS works only because they make it easy for themselves. Then it becomes clear that if you don't really have an absolute need for macOS it is not worth the trouble since Windows/Linux actually make better use of the hardware with little trouble in comparison. By extension you develop a feeling that desktops Mac are really overpriced and don't have much of an advantage in the Apple Silicon age, since efficiency don't get you much but the performance delta for a given price is insane. In fact, buying a PC that is equivalent to a base Mac Studio will cost you 1k euros less, even if you go with "nice but not that necessary" things (especially for a personal computer, like 10G networking). But yeah, you also learn that it's better to not waste time trying to confort to Apple agenda, but that's also true for real Macs in my opinion.
- normaler 3y ago
  This is my current state of thought. Proprietary software perceives me as an enemy who needs to be locked out of as many features as possible to allow for more money to be extracted out of me while also investing the least amount possible back into the product. The only timeframe where proprietary software is groundbreaking and at the forefront of technology is when they have not yet captured and locked in a large market share.
_heimdall 3y ago
This is the reason I still buy older cars. I can't stand owning a car only to find out that I can't work on it myself. Even if I don't have the time or tools needed for a specific job, if its something I could do on my own it means the job should be that much easier and cheaper to have a mechanic do.

rpdillon 3y ago

This is a great point. I sort of detest becoming an expert at proprietary stuff, because I know they'll just change it before long. I've lamented about this elsewhere as modern software creating "permanent amateurs". Even those that want to invest in expertise often find their knowledge outdated in a handful of years, and those that don't want to invest can easily justify it by pointing out this effect.

lupire 3y ago
Microsoft, at least before Cloud happened, supported their tech stacks with backward compatibility for decades.

xattt 3y ago

Proprietary or not, tinkering help you develop an intuition of what might be wrong.

i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
Yeah I mean, whoever made the original statement is just not an OS engineer.
- mandeepj 3y ago
  > just not an OS engineer. Or not just an engineer
  - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
    Nah I can believe they'd be a chemical engineer or even a software developer that writes iOS apps or something like that.
    - xattt 3y ago
      I wanted to say steam/power engineer, but even they understand the value of tinkering.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I know plenty of people with stamps who don't care to fiddle with their OS or change their own oil. People who work on putting things in orbit and beyond, people who build bridges, people who design undersea robots and airplanes. They're most definitely engineers.
    - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
      Yeah fair.
yencabulator 3y ago
Meanwhile, the article is clear about how proprietary code absolutely prevented the author from understanding why the Wifi and Bluetooth failed with specific apps.

umbra07 3y ago

I fully empathize - and yet, there are benefits from tinkerers/hackers messing around on proprietary hardware/software. Hackintosh - and similar communties - led to projects like Asahi Linux, Nouveau, Panfrost, etc.

dataflow 3y ago

> I think there's a difference with Linux, because it's something you own and control and can dive into and see every part of. I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out. The problem with this approach is then you get a generation of engineers with tunnel vision thinking the One True Way to achieve your goal is the same way your GNU (or whatever) software did it. Invest time in learning your technologies, whatever they are. There's valuable knowledge in proprietary stuff just as there is in OSS.

ryukoposting 3y ago
I agree with your point in principle, and yet I installed Ubuntu on my work laptop this January after using Windows professionally for my entire (5 year) career. I've found myself moving in the opposite direction from the person in the root comment, because I find that it's getting harder and harder to find tolerable proprietary software. It feels like everything is glacially slow, laden with ads and tracking, reliant on an internet connection for basic functionality, or some combination of the above.
- dataflow 3y ago
  "There is valuable knowledge worth learning in the technology" != "this is strictly better software on every axis and you should switch to it for your daily work"
  - WWLink 3y ago
    As someone that learned to program on BSD and shortly thereafter, Mac OS X and Linux.... I honestly don't know how people use Windows machines as a dev environment 24/7. It would drive me mad. Everything's so wonky and weird. Everything from symlinks to file permissions is just backwards and fucky.
    - 76SlashDolphin 3y ago
      Back in the day it was alright because Microsoft gave you a fairly good dev environment in the form of Visual Studio, with the focus of it being squarely on desktop application development instead of tinkering with the system or running web services. It didn't stop people from doing it anyways but it's part of the reason why everything is so janky. Then the web took over and Microsoft tried for ages to make .net and Windows Server work until they realised they can't tune an OS that was never meant for backend development and just put all their focus on WSL. In the year 2024 there is almost no reason to be doing any non-desktop dev in a Windows environment unless it's on WSL. And you get the benefit of having an actually sane window management system and external display handling unlike MacOS, not to mention how nice PowerToys is.

WanderPanda 3y ago

Even this "I hate investing time in proprietary technologies, because I know I can be stopped or locked out" is a hard-gained insight. Hackintosh is one of those things that made me understand this. Nothing like spending weeks to get your hackintosh working smoothly with all the hardware just to find out that the next update breaks everything. I've come to see it as a necessary part of the journey

seec 3y ago
In my experience, doing a hackintosh actually teaches you that Apple hardware is not that special and macOS works only because they make it easy for themselves. Then it becomes clear that if you don't really have an absolute need for macOS it is not worth the trouble since Windows/Linux actually make better use of the hardware with little trouble in comparison. By extension you develop a feeling that desktops Mac are really overpriced and don't have much of an advantage in the Apple Silicon age, since efficiency don't get you much but the performance delta for a given price is insane. In fact, buying a PC that is equivalent to a base Mac Studio will cost you 1k euros less, even if you go with "nice but not that necessary" things (especially for a personal computer, like 10G networking). But yeah, you also learn that it's better to not waste time trying to confort to Apple agenda, but that's also true for real Macs in my opinion.
normaler 3y ago
This is my current state of thought. Proprietary software perceives me as an enemy who needs to be locked out of as many features as possible to allow for more money to be extracted out of me while also investing the least amount possible back into the product. The only timeframe where proprietary software is groundbreaking and at the forefront of technology is when they have not yet captured and locked in a large market share.

_heimdall 3y ago

This is the reason I still buy older cars. I can't stand owning a car only to find out that I can't work on it myself. Even if I don't have the time or tools needed for a specific job, if its something I could do on my own it means the job should be that much easier and cheaper to have a mechanic do.