what's a neckbeard? i imagine you sporting a magnificent handlebar mustache as a result of this remark. anyways: i'd phrase it as "i can buy an $800 computer

what's a neckbeard? i imagine you sporting a magnificent handlebar mustache as a result of this remark. anyways: i'd phrase it as "i can buy an $800 computer that doubles as a phone." ever since smartphones appeared, having a really portable computer has been more appealing to me than having a phone that is a computer. indeed, i continue to use a dumbphone, a cheapo mp3 player, and sometimes (gasp!) pen & paper to duplicate all the functionality i ever really used my smartphone for. of course, phrased that way, it might make more sense to shapeways-up a really stylish case for a raspberry pi than buy a $800 phone, but the point is that i don't really agree with the way that you've framed the decision to begin with. but even phrased that way, i /still/ disagree, because android strikes me as more of art of the state than state of the art: i think the vm (dalvik, i think?) is wedged in at way too low a level. large parts of the window system and other core components are written in java rather than C, which, coming from GNU-land (clean-shaven, thank you) strikes me as rather strange. i mean, i like intents, content providers, and all these other high-level parts of the system design, i just wish more of the implementation were in C so that it would be more portable. i'd like to be able to bind whatever language i choose to the code that's flinging surfaces, at least, even if not to the window toolkit. although there is this scripting layer, which might be a good start, but i haven't used it as it advertises itself as "alpha quality."