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I personally feel that the removal of developer tools as a standard component of the OS has been one of the biggest setbacks for computing - especially teaching

I personally feel that the removal of developer tools as a standard component of the OS has been one of the biggest setbacks for computing - especially teaching computing - in the last few decades. I can understand the commercial reasons - "developers! developers!" monkey-dances not-withstanding - and I can understand the 'consideration of the average user' not needing the tools installed, but I don't agree with it. I think that any OS that doesn't ship with the tools required to make that computer do more work is a crippled, none-OS, and I urge my fellow geeks to disassociate themselves from the elite mode of thought that states that developer tools should only be available for developers. So much serious advance of the state of the art has occurred just because there have been compilers on board when a curious mind first logs on .. I'm immensely saddened to hear of my younger siblings first experience 'with computers' being the panopticon of the iPad. No compiler onboard means its not a computer for you, but rather the person who made it, and this is really frustrating to see younger generations getting conned out of some really powerful features of their lives. Just the hassle of having to sign up to get the devtools is enough to dissuade the curious, and its precisely the curious we need to invite to this party.

simonh 12y ago
My take is exactly the opposite. When I was a CS student in the late 80s it was extremely hard to get access to high quality development tools beyond. Yes MS-DOS came with QBASIC, but if you wanted to program in anything more capable such as C or Pascal you were out of luck. Nowadays the highest quality dev tools for any platform are just a free download away. Python, C#, Java, Go, pretty much whatever you want. Eve better, many popular games such as WoW and Minecraft either come with built-in scripting or easily accessible extension and scripting tools. Squeak is awesome and soon you'll be able to program in it without even downloading anything thanks to the HTML5 client. Linux generally comes with a whole ton of dev tools by default, and the Mac is close on it's heels and even has Applescript built in to the GUI layer. There has never been an easier time to get into programming.
gurkendoktor 12y ago
My 'first experience with computers' was playing with a Super Nintendo, for many of my friends it was a Gameboy or some other console. The iPad is a lot easier to hack than either of those, just as the iPhone is a lot more developer-friendly than the feature phones before it. It all depends on whether you categorise today's devices as computers or consoles. And I remember how I had to pay lots of €€€ for Delphi and later Visual C++ on Windows; at least the latter is now free! I don't think there is a clear trend in computers becoming more hostile to tinkerers.
boomlinde 12y ago
Sort of tracing back to the article, on the bright side, macs are stuffed with developer tools these days.

simonh 12y ago

My take is exactly the opposite. When I was a CS student in the late 80s it was extremely hard to get access to high quality development tools beyond. Yes MS-DOS came with QBASIC, but if you wanted to program in anything more capable such as C or Pascal you were out of luck. Nowadays the highest quality dev tools for any platform are just a free download away. Python, C#, Java, Go, pretty much whatever you want. Eve better, many popular games such as WoW and Minecraft either come with built-in scripting or easily accessible extension and scripting tools. Squeak is awesome and soon you'll be able to program in it without even downloading anything thanks to the HTML5 client. Linux generally comes with a whole ton of dev tools by default, and the Mac is close on it's heels and even has Applescript built in to the GUI layer. There has never been an easier time to get into programming.

gurkendoktor 12y ago

My 'first experience with computers' was playing with a Super Nintendo, for many of my friends it was a Gameboy or some other console. The iPad is a lot easier to hack than either of those, just as the iPhone is a lot more developer-friendly than the feature phones before it. It all depends on whether you categorise today's devices as computers or consoles. And I remember how I had to pay lots of €€€ for Delphi and later Visual C++ on Windows; at least the latter is now free! I don't think there is a clear trend in computers becoming more hostile to tinkerers.

boomlinde 12y ago

Sort of tracing back to the article, on the bright side, macs are stuffed with developer tools these days.