Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is Computing As Cool and Fun As It Once Was?
dryriver writes: I got together with old computer nerd friends the other day. All of us have been at it since the 8-bit/1980s days of Amstrad, Atari, Commodore 64-type home computers. Everybody at the meeting agreed on one thing -- computing is just not as cool and as much fun as it once was. One person lamented that computer games nowadays are tied to internet DRM like Steam, that some crucial DCC software is available to rent only now (e.g. Photoshop) and that many "basic freedoms" of the old-school computer nerd are increasingly disappearing. Another said that Windows 10's spyware aspects made him give up on his beloved PC platform and that he will use Linux and Android devices only from now on, using consoles to game on instead of a PC because of this. A third complained about zero privacy online, internet advertising, viruses, ransomware, hacking, crapware. I lamented that the hardware industry still hasn't given us anything resembling photorealistic realtime 3D graphics, and that the current VR trend arrived a full decade later than it should have. A point of general agreement was that big tech companies in particular don't treat computer users with enough respect anymore. What do Slashdotters think? Is computing still as cool and fun as it once was, or has something "become irreversibly lost" as computing evolved into a multi-billion dollar global business?
That is all.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Dealing with crap like systemd.
Learning a new language, you don't just learn the language. you learn the build system, sopme complicated IDE plugins, some decent libraries, but most are hack together messes etc.
One example illustrates it all: Javascript.
The barrier to entry for nerdy children is much higher now then it was for me.
This is what my 8 year old daughter did:
1. Go to https://scratch.mit.edu/
2. Start coding
Total time to surmount barriers: 10 seconds.