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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?
There's no variety of systems, operating systems, one API set trying to prove that it is better at one task than another. Now it's basically 2.5 platforms and that's it.
Sadly, I don't think the best or even more interesting platforms won.
Definitely no.. much more boring now than 30 years ago.
Because of Windows spying?
LMAO.
That is all.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Back in the day, someone dedicated could learn everything he had about a system, from the CPU, registers, RAM, I/O, video, etc. It was relatively simple.
The only way to get that same "cool and fun" feeling is to dive into the 8-bit microcontrollers such as the ATmega328P. Even the latest Arduinos have become too complex with their ARM SoC.
Look on hackaday.com, there's often fun projects based on those basic, entry-level, sub-100MHz 8-bit uC.
Cool is about pushing the boundary and enjoying experiences which are decades away from mass production. A desktop is not going to be super cool in 2016. Arduino controllers to operate hand wired power windows in your home might be.
You can get very open and hackable Linux / Chromebook+chrouton desktops and laptops, but you may be hard pressed to get them to do anything which is not already widely available.
Switch to Linux and the cool factor becomes very much alive.
It never was that great.
If you're a gamer, you are going to be forever at the mercy of the game companies, who are going to exploit their customers to some extent to maximize profit.
If you are a hacker, you have your own hacker-produced computing platforms and tools and a wide-open vista of hardware and physical objects that can now be designed and manufactured by the individual.
If you depend on some company to make everything you use, you've set yourself up to be their "client". Don't do that.
Bruce Perens.
yes its fun - Arduinos, Rpi, fpga with fricken Arms embedded .. ... ,..
thinks we only dreamed of 30 years ago
don't like an 'app' build it
don't like a platform move
-- get off my lawn sonny --
> many "basic freedoms" of the old-school computer nerd are increasingly disappearing
There is an organization devoted to computer freedom called the Free Software Foundation, closely allied with GNU. GNU makes most of the operating system we call Linux.
> Software is available to rent only now (e.g. Photoshop)
There are several alternatives to Photoshop which use free licenses, meaning licensees that respect freedom. None of them do everything Photoshop does in the exact same way Photoshop does it, but for any *particular* Photoshop user, there's probably a free software package that fits their particular needs well.
> Windows 10's spyware aspects made him give up on his beloved PC platform and that he will use Linux
Linux is certainly one way to avoid Windows built-in spyware.
> viruses, ransomware, hacking, crapware
That's 99% Windows too, Linux desktop users see viruses and malware very, very rarely - maybe once every 15 years.
Linux isn't perfect. It does however address most of the concerns mentioned.
computing, music, whatever was better back in the day.
I have this conversation periodically, except it is usually addressed to music, art, tv, sports, or any of a number of topics. It's like those guys who see a high school girl now and say "Man, they did not look like that back in my day".. yes, they did. It's just that when you saw them then, you didn't see a cute blond, you saw the B***h from social studies.
There are many exciting things going on now. I am looking at how quickly and massively raspberry pi's have been moving into area where their creators never thought they would be used. I see arduinos and the maker movement and think "Wow". Just a look at adafruit or any of a hundred other sites and the amount of very affordable tech is staggering. We could stop all tech development now and it would be centuries before we explore all the possibilities of what is sitting on the desk in front of us.
I met someone at a coffee shop awhile back and there was a bunch of teenagers acting like teenagers. My friend is now in their mid-30's. I am in my 50's. I had first met them when they were a teenager at a coffee shop. My friend commented that they were not like that back then and I pointed out that I was their current age when we first met and yes.. my friend was just as dumb and teenagery back then.
Excitement is never external. You can look at any family pic taken at Disneyland and see the scowling goth kid who is totally not having fun. OK. You have given up windows as the programming platform and gone to Linux and Android.. So? You did not start programming on Windows. You started on other platforms and moved with the times.
But, that is not what you are complaining about..
What catches my attention is that *none* of your computing complaints are really computing complaints. They are consumer complaints. You should not be doing this comparison back to their early 80's equivalents.. televisions with 3 channels. Radio. Vinyl records. Newspapers. Magazines. Computing is more than fine right now. It completely rocks. Consumer products are far greater than what they were.
I have thought the same thing.
Of course there are a few fundamental differences between then and now from my point of view:
1. I was a young teen and had tons of time (and energy) on my hands to play with these things.
2. Everything you learned you figured out on your own or as a group share with close friends, supplemented with a few manuals and magazines.
3. The hardware was finite enough you could basically learn everything from the low level access to the hardware to all the software features (basic or machine language). You could literally learn what every location in IO or memory did (53281 anyone??).
4. With a few days or at most weeks time with even modest skill levels you could put together something that could "wow" your friends and perhaps even non-computer family members.
5. Atari / TI / Commodore computer overnight parties where a bunch of us get together to compete to show off the best games etc. in an attempt to prove we had the best platform.
Today we have a lot more learning resources out there, and the hardware is much more powerful but in my mind it just isn't as fun. There is certainly no way to whip up something that would "wow" anyone. It's more a tool now than a fun hobby.
This weekend I spent some time improving my personal installation of SOGo groupware, so that my wife and I can better share email, calendars, and contacts on a system that we personally own.
Certainly, big companies don't respect users, but it's still possible to provide all of the services that I need using only Free Software, so I do. Pretty much the only exception is navigation, for which I use Google Maps. Everything else we do with Free Software and the more I move my wife to our own services, the happier she is. Personally, I find that immensely gratifying. As long as that continues, I'll find computing as cool and fun as ever.
When I started in computing, you needed a soldering iron, a particular skill-set, and if you were good, some programming skills, to supplement very minimalistic disk operating systems. It was also kind of fun to witness the reactions of people seeing and hearing a 14-inch hard drive powering up, or in some cases the look of recognition on their faces when they realize that the IMSAI 8080 they saw in the movie War Games was a real thing, not just some Hollywood prop. I even built a speech synthesizer, and got to see my friends' eyes go wide when I made it say "Shall we play a game?" I even designed and built some of my own IEEE696 cards to plug into the backplane that did things you couldn't get kits or pre-made boards for. Before the IMSAI, and the Morrow Designs stuff, I had an 8-bit CDP1802-based computer built on perfboard, complete with an integer BASIC interpreter. Fun, fun, fun. Also great experience for later in life; all the skills and experience I gained from all that has kept me employed all this time.
These days? You might, if you wanted to take the time, effot, and expense to do it, design and build PCIe cards for special functions, but largely there's no point; almost anything you'd want the hardware to do, you can just go out and buy. 'Building a computer' now takes a screwdriver, not a soldering iron, and just about any teenage kid with half a brain can get the parts and cobble a box together. Sure, there's microcontroller stuff of all kinds out there, but there's little to do between those and full-blown desktop systems anymore. Likewise, writing software yourself is almost pointless, you can download just about anything you want, too. Even general electronics as a hobby isn't very accessible or fun anymore, because so much is surface-mount only, not too much is through-hole, so the really interesting devices mean you're more or less required to spin a PCB for whatever it is, which makes it so much more expensive and so much less accessible.
I guess if you're into computer gaming (I lost interest years ago) or just using a computer as an appliance (which they more or less are anymore) then I guess it's 'fun' for you, but from the background I'm coming from, it really isn't so much anymore.
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.
" Live like that for a month and then tell me which is better"
OK but do I also get my 20-year-old body back, union jobs, single-income families that can afford a house, and a future in electrical engineering?
I'll tell you right away what is better.
The only platform that you can still get the hood open now is Linux. I personally prefer Arch Linux or OpenWRT depending on the hardware and expected use for a project.
But even with Linux you need to choose carefully as vendors work to close even the many products built upon Linux. Just buying hardware with Linux doesn't mean it's open enough to be useful for example: Android as generally sold. AOSP is the exception.
If you want to intro someone to "old skool" look at the Raspberry Pi platform or OpenWRT. NOTE: even those have proprietary components and BLOBs of proprietary binary only code in almost ALL circumstances.
General consumer computers like Windows PCs and Macs are becoming like current cars with less and less access with each new generation. You can work on them yourself less and less. This is driven by both manufacturers wanting more control particularly as advances in CPU power have slowed and government regulations that lock down what were previously tweak-able components like WiFi router hardware.
Right now the most interesting stuff is in "do it yourself" IoT devices. But you better "do it yourself" rather than simply buy it. Otherwise it is likely "ownable" by someone other than you straight out of the box or ALREADY owned by the manufacturer who is spying on you using it. And given that there are no monetary or legal penalties for the complete lack of security this is unlikely to change regardless of various government solicited reports.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
While all true, people seem to forget how hard it was to get software before the internet, especially if you were a kid with no money. These days you can download vast amounts of high quality software, and its source code to tinker with. In some respects we are a lot better off now, and when you had to rely on friends, clubs and magazine cover disks/tapes.
On the other hand, we are definitely a lot further removed form the inner workings of computers now. There is a massive amount of abstraction, which is kind of good for a lot of purposes but also very much encourages people not to look too far beyond really high level library functions. The lack of hacking friendly ports on the hardware side is a big issue too.
But then again you can get a pretty good oscilloscope for peanuts now, so in some ways hardware hacking is a lot easier than it used to be to get into. We don't have those great kits you could buy from magazines any more though, and while people like Adafruit do offer some interesting stuff it's more Arduino level plugging modules together than figuring out why your transistor biasing isn't working.
Personally I like the older stuff. Emulators are great for it actually - back in the day I used to reboot my computer about 900 times a day as I was trying to debug assembler (didn't have a single step debugger and of course no memory protection) and figure out what the hardware was doing, and emulators make it much easier.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I was just talking about this the other day with some co-workers. It used to be that you could manage your work network, even a decently large network, and know everything about it in your head. Reading a manual and being a smart guy (or gal) was enough to have a working environment.
No more. People expect remote access and that everything should be working 24x7, the added complexity of building out those environments, and the merging of multiple technologies means that every change becomes a much more complex endeavor. Encryption requirements makes everything more difficult to implement and troubleshoot. There are caveats with virtually everything, and I just don't have the time to be an expert on everything around me.
Example from this year - my IP phone system, which integrates with Exchange using custom nonesense for playback in outlook, using the LLDP enabled voice VLAN on my switches, with servers running on my vmware hosts, each of which have multiple redundant connections, with handsets connected to a switch using 802.1x authentication, that's complex enough as it is, but then buried deep in the release notes was a bullet point that exchange 2013 wasn't supported, 18 months after exchange 2013 was released. That's a lot of stuff to be an expert in; a far cry from 10/100 hubs with a single management IP address and a stand alone server that send voicemail over encrypted SMTP.
Developing GUIs for databases on Windows 10 is not going to be fun and cool. But that existed back in the 80s, it was COBOL on mainframes.
If you want it to be fun then you have to pick something fun, which usually involves one of the small boards like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, adding some motor control... This is what I do. These small systems are all quite digestible and have stuff built in we would have killed for, and you can make actual things which do things, be they useful or just playful.
Or you could develop games for a classic system - there are still people doing homebrew games for all the old systems like Megadrive, Speccy, Apple ][, C/64, Lynx, etc etc. Or there's RPGMaker.
There is so much awesome stuff going on right now from Arduino-like Maker stuff to drones to GPU power to deep learning to VR - I just got excited about a cheap tiny little camera component (neeeerd).
So when you say 'computing isn't as fun and cool as it used to be' you mean YOU aren't as fun and cool as you used to be - and who is, besides Betty White? Not me. But that's what really happened, don't blame it on computing. You let your skills decay, didn't keep up to date, don't get excited by new stuff, and are too lazy to even keep up with what you knew how to do. The C64 is still thriving if you thought it was more interesting than watching sports or, oh hey, Westworld is on, I'll start tomorrow.
You don't need to use Steam. You don't need to use Photoshop. What's that? You like the features or the convenience of the walled garden? Oh well in that case I guess computing really does suck.
You seem to suggest that a walled garden is necessary to enjoy those features. The fact is, Photoshop, and other software in the Creative Suite used to be available for purchase. Now, it's rent only. I think that's what he was complaining about. I, too, am irritated by this. I still use CS6, the last version of Creative Suite you could buy. I refuse to use rented software.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
This is the sort of complaining that has no place on a 'news for nerds' site - if you want it, build it. If you can't build it, don't bitch that others haven't done it as quickly as you wanted. I don't think OP submitter was the one working on the VR judder problem or the high density screen refresh problem or any of that. This sounds like a bunch of dipshit 'enthusiast' friends from the 80s that only ever dipped a toe in the industry and didn't actually end up building anything they wanted over the thirty years of their careers
Declining SAT scores were a big topic of discussion in the 80s and 90s, but what most people never really took into account was that in the 50s most jobs only required a high school diploma; by the 80s more people felt they needed to have a college degree. The decline in scores didn't reflect a decline in ability of graduating high schoolers, it reflected more of the lower-performing graduates taking the test.
I've been in the computing field for a long time. When I went into it back in the early 80s most people had never seen a computer. There were a very small number of people who worked with computers, and I'd say about half of them were doing at least moderately interesting stuff. Today there are many many more people doing interesting stuff, it's just that the growth in interesting work has been swamped by a rising ocean of mindless, bureaucratic IT drone work.
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> I ran Linux in a corporate environment for 10 years. It certainly worked, and I found ways to get what I needed done.
It does work, my corporation ran Linux exclusively for 15 years. It was a network security company, so for most of those years Windows was not allowed on the corporate network.
> I think Linux is fine for the home, fine web browsing, but it becomes a major problem for people in corporations, simply because they're addicted to Windows
Working in a Windows-centric company, there is a compromise I've been using for four years. OS X is certified Unix. When you want to, you can ignore the shiny Mac GUI and run all your favorite GPL software that you've used on Linux. Also when you want to, you can run Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office 2016, 2016, etc. It integrates pretty well with a Windows-based company. Of course there are small issues here and there, but there are also small issues here and there when using Windows.
Seriously. The current VR fad arrived a decade later than it should have? Bullshit. There was a VR fad twenty years ago and that wasn't even the first. The current fad is the third that I can think of, and no more compelling than the previous two.
Head-mounted displays just aren't a good idea. They seem like a good idea, they seem like the first step towards a hollodeck, which is the thing that everyone really wants, but they're awkward to use and any immersiveness that they may impart is fairly meaningless when you're still sitting on a couch. Your sense of immersion is still coming, as it always does, from your own ability to suspend disbelief and from the artist's ability to craft a compelling environment.
Those omni-directional treadmills are more interesting than the head-mounted displays, but it doesn't look like they work very well.
Take application development. Pioneering has been replaced by engineering. Great for making complicated and reliable products, not so great for empowerment of the individual. Software engineering tends to be teamwork. Depending on how "standard" the required end product is you can parcel out the interface design, the overall apllication design, the datastructures, the core algorithms, data management, and housekeeping. Could be 3-50 software engineers in a team. Used to be 1 programmer doing all of that.
Take high-performance programming. It used to be an art. Found e.g. in DOD stuff, scientific software, and games. Often in assembler, for speed. Nowadays that's mostly out. Certainly for scientific software. You use compilers of even scripting languages that call libraries to do the heavy lifting. You're quite unlikely to do better than the library builders. If you're writing some really new algorithm, you'll code it in C/C++. If absolutely necessary, you can make that code tunable (array stride, blocksize, etc.) and write an algorithm to optimise those parameters for your specific hardware (like e.g. BLAS). If it's too slow, buy better hardware. If it's still too slow, get access to a Hadoop cluster and parallelise your algorithm.
Take datacommunication. In the early days datacommunication meant controlling some UART and sending squiggles down a wire. Now it's calling a packaged protocol stack and talking to the appropriate protocol layers. More often than not that's the connection or session layer or higher ... unless you are a specialised networking engineer.
As for computer users as clients: the nerdy types are dying out. What today's consumer wants is things like smartphones and tablets. And what do they want it for? To surf the web (shopping, news, amusement (e.g. video torrents, Youtube)), and to waste time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and various chats. If they somehow want a desktop computer, they'll only know it for the OS it runs. That would be "Windows" or "Apple" (meaning macOs, but Apple users typically don't know that). And that's what the industry is giving them. Want "Basic Freddoms" ? Bugger off and run Linux, you freak.
So, yes. Computing as a product has become commoditised and geared towards the mass market. It's not easy to turn a buck by catering for nerds: the real money is in serving customers. And it shows. Consumer-grade users get a consumer-grade experience plus consumer-grade treatment (read: DRM, spyware, bloatware).
Those who want to play around with a computer however never had it better. For less than 50$ you can get a complete Raspberry Pi system (or a lookalike) that's more powerful than a clunky old PC. For 500$ you can get performance you used to have only on workstations, and for 1500$ you can get the same power you used to need a supercomputer for.
The only thing stopping you is know-how, time and interest. But that's not the industry's fault,
I am assuming you really meant "computing". Not just desktop programming and gaming like the examples implied.
When I was just a lad, the adults had programming careers that were very fun. They solved complex puzzles, and problems. It was very frustrating but very rewarding. Even growing up, I enjoyed programming which was very much a "figuring things out" topic minus the grease and back pain of former generations.
But today, with more than a decade into adulthood, that topic has become mostly a commodity. Windows, Linux, embedded, or otherwise. Lots of people "program" and most problems have already been solved. It's more a test of google-fu than puzzle solving. As a career it is very boring, trivial, and narrow in the results. There are still positions like before but they are outnumbered 1000 to 1.
So computing in that aspect is no longer fun. Same with hardware, it's all the same. It's all commodity. The gains in the permutations are so minor that cost easily overrides the performance benefits in most cases. This is primarily because hardware has outclassed software. I think software is probably a decade behind hardware now.
But if we switch to micro computers, sensors, and networks beyond just wifi: The glory days of the past still exist. Smart homes, smart gardens, etc are just a few tinkering days away. The common geek has access to fabricate their own custom hardware solutions. Writing the software is still mostly trivial due to the internet, but the ideas and solutions custom to a geeks unique physical world or situation is well with in reach. In this space we are still only limited by our imaginations in defining the problems to solve.
It is still very much FUN!
However, there's zero alternative to Acrobat.
I take it, then, that you've never looked at Scribus a cross-platform, FOSS page layout program that's being used by professionals to create newsletters, periodicals and books. And, if you're having trouble with it, there's an active and helpful mailing list full of people ready to advise you. Check it out; you might just be surprised by how good it is.
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Replying here partly in agreement but mostly in wonder about the OP's AC status. If your ideas or opinions are so bad that you don't want to associate your name (or even a handle) with them, then why bother to post at all? I'd make an exception for cases where you are saying something with possible repercussions, but I'm not seeing it in the OP of this thread. (In a sense, it's moot, since my settings render the ACs nearly invisible. It was the quote in the visible reply that exposed this AC.) Incidentally, it doesn't matter in terms of protecting privacy. Slashdot knows who you are, and surely you can't trust the sanctity of your personal information as stored on Slashdot.
Now what's the agreeing part? In the days of yore computers were within the scope of understanding of a single person. The systems were still small enough that it was at least theoretically possible to understand all of how they worked. I thought that was really fun and cool, even if I never got there I enjoyed the chase. I caught just the tail end of that period.
Not sure when the transition happened, but at this time there is clearly no hope of understanding everything about any "normal" machine. Both the hardware and software have passed the human scope of understanding or control. No one has time to look at billions and billions of transistors or millions and millions of lines of code. We have to abstract, and picking your level of abstraction is not the same as understanding the entire thing.
There's also a level of threat and paranoia that cuts into the fun. Maybe part of that is a result of getting old, but I think it is mostly just a matter of experience and understanding my own limitations. I really don't want to be pwned, but all it would take is one juicy vulnerability, and I'm sure the serious black-hat hackers can find one if'n they want to. If a serious hacker is coming for me, I might as well save both of us the trouble and just turn over my passwords now, eh? The best defense is having nothing worth hacking for?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Computing is a lot more fun now than it was even ten years ago, let alone twenty, let alone longer. You can still do all the same stuff people did back then if you want; people are still wire wrapping their own computers from scratch, for example. And you can still play the games of yesteryear, through emulation. But now there's a whole bunch of things to do which didn't even exist back then, and furthermore, it's vastly easier to get access to a leg up so that you don't have to do a whole job yourself. For example, it's been reasonably possible to build quadcopters since about the 1990s, when cheap MEMS accelerometers began sampling from Analog Devices, and before they appeared in the Wiimote and people began to reappropriate them. But today you can buy a flight controller or build one out of components or you can buy a MCU board and an IMU board. You can write your own flight control software or you can just download code and write the binary or you can download and compile and optionally customize. You can buy the ESCs off the shelf or you can build your own or you can buy cheap ones and reflash them with superior open-source firmware which you can customize. And this is computing, obviously, since each of these things is a little flying computing cluster. And that's before even getting into making them autonomous. We didn't used to have multi-core computers with multiple GB of RAM and an onboard multi-core vector processor which would fit into a ~5W power envelope to do stuff like that with.
Computing is also a lot more cool than it used to be, which ought to be painfully obvious. It's cool to carry a fancy, needlessly expensive computer around in your pocket! We used to get laughed at just for owning a computer, let alone one you could keep in your pocket. Now you get laughed at if your pocket computer is too old!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and I've got a 2TB hard drive and writeable Blue-Ray. So I'm at nobody's mercy. Now, if you're into Multi-Player games exclusively you might have a point. Especially the ones that connect to servers. Then again, you can still play Phantasy Star Universe on private servers if you're so inclined.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The computing environment certainly has changed. The powers that be are busily taking a lot of the fun out of it in their efforts to create 'walled gardens' where THEY (not YOU) control everything. While I am glad that I don't have to get out a soldering iron just to save a few bytes to permanent storage; I get enraged every time some program or system tries to hide my data from me or make it nearly impossible to do what I want with it. I get ticked off when all your settings change because your system decided it was going to 'upgrade' whether you wanted to or not and the company that wrote the software wants to make you view some new ads. I pull my hair out when I can't even find where my app decided to store that file I just created. I certainly miss the days when the 'install program' was copy *.* and the 'uninstall program' was del *.* and you didn't have to worry about a dozen registry settings or DLLs left behind to play havoc on your system. I am currently working on a new system that will bring a lot of that control back where it belongs...with the user.
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The programmer's toolbox is better now, with more languages, code can have longer, clearer and more complex lines, safer calls, better garbage collection and modularity, a more uniform common user interface, and sophisticated database interactions.
What's missing is that great unknown, limitless potential, the clubs, Dr. Dobbs, and the clueless millions wanting, needing and willing to believe whatever you told them. And they were willing to pay too.
Programming isn't as cool anymore. I know people in IT who look down on programmers, ridicule what they do. They beg their bosses for classes on how to be an administrator and run Windows, Servers, SharePoint, 365, Azure, Exchange, SMS,...
There is big money in programming, but rarely for programmers. Corporate programming jobs are often outsourced with short short term contracts, or just part time, which negatively affects the software product. The corporations don't care, as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line. Further hampering good programming, the sales departments have become dominant, turning software products into advertising platforms - even the operating system. Surveillance has become an indispensable revenue stream, as businesses have learned from Google and FaceBook how to monetize user information.
The game industry rakes in over $20 billion annually. As they've gotten richer, they've gotten more paranoid over DRM. 3rd tier business software is everywhere, with customers paying more every year. Accountants', auditors' and governments' standards demand that certain financial information be packaged according to the rule books. If anything goes wrong, until otherwise proved, it's the local programmer's fault. The one exception: if the programmer is in 'the club', they find somebody/something else to blame.
Yeah, programming can still be fun, but cool - eh.
IT landscape is pain in the ass if you are seeking for a motivating programming job. Usually, large companies buy products to do almost everything. What is left is customization to your particular business or enterprise. In this arena, the software vendors are making huge efforts to make the interface as boring as they can since "easy to customize" is a major selling point. They want to tell your boss your work can be done by a monkey, so they make it that way. Some are having graphical interfaces which at the end of the day happen to be more time consuming than an standard API in any language a good programmer can take advantage of.
A fool with a tool is still a fool. So, they hire monkeys to play with the graphical programming interface and they produce shitty code because it is so easy to add layers and layers of shit over shit. Then they wonder why that beast they paid many hundred thousand dollars is working so slow and so bad.
All the fun is at home.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Dollar for dollar, computers (the device itself) haven't gotten more expensive come to think of it, but there are extenuating circumstances that makes it seem like it is, like the "need" for internet access. I also don't know what the C64 and the pre-IBM compatibles cost. I bought my computers either used or from a no-name shop when I first got into things. Used computers seem to be harder to come by at the steep discount you could originally get them at.
Computers are a lot more expensive.
Cost of an IBM PC in 1983: $4000.
Cost of a Raspberry Pi in 2016: $29.
The Raspberry Pi is several orders of magnitude faster, and comes with WAY more free development software.
Forget compiled languages. That's not fun.
We want command based (imperative) languages that can be run in a REPL for fun. BASIC basically fits this.
Take Python as a contemporary example. Now look at how many basic features of interactivity are NOT enabled in an easy way in Python by default: LOCATE, INKEY, SOUND, PLAY, SCREEN, PSET, LINE, CIRCLE, PGET.
Just these. You can't do ANY of these things in Python with a basic install. "Yes," if you have tkinter in your install, you kind of can. But it's hairy and complex. It's not anywhere near as simple or accessible as BASIC. Pygmy makes some of these things possible, but those are further steps of installation away, and the interactivity feels further away.
Line numbers are incredibly simple (read: understandable) as a flow control model. "Why Johnny Can't Code" outlined the problem with mandatory complex abstract control structures.
I think there are basic fundamental missing pieces in the contemporary programming environment, and that the industry is worse for it.
You do have a point. Also, a counterpoint:
> but I don't see how someone claiming to have a PhD in nuclear physics is somehow more credible just because
If you read here often, you start to recognize some of the names. Actually even if you DON'T read here often, you may recognize somw names, like Bruce Perens. Bruce doesn't "claim" to have a PhD, Bruce is a *recognized* expert. When Bruce writes about security and such, you can bet that he has good reason to say whatever he says, he knows what he's talking about. When I disagree with Bruce, I know that I should take a moment to really think about what he says - if it sounds dumb at first, I might be missing something.
I've read enough posts by TacoCowboy to know that he's insightful, and to know a bit of his life story. When he says something, a) I want to read it and b) I know where he's coming from, so I can understand his comment *in the context of who he is and where he's coming from*. Reading a paragraph, I can understand better if I know which story that paragraph is part of.
Some other commenters, I know where their coming from too, they are here to advance an agenda and don't mind making up completely fictional "facts" to try to advance their propaganda. I know that if I bother to read a post by MdSolar, and "facts" he claims likely came from his ass. Having his name in those posts is helpful.
A few people probably read hear enough that raymorris is a veteran IT security professional, writing security software and detection/export code. They've seen enough of raymorris's posts to realize that he knows this topic, so when he gives analysis or advice, they read it with that in mind. Other people may have noticed that raymorris also likes to troll the most Koolaid drinking the liberals here, the guys who blindly follow and parrot anything they hear about "evil corporations" and "investors", but don't know anything at all about the topics they flame about. So those who have noticed this don't take raymorris's posts seriously when they see him trolling the most clueless of liberals.
It's useful to have the names on the posts. You might see a ridiculous political post and if it's by raymorris you know he's parodying liberals, if the exact same words are posted by MdSolar you know he's being completely serious - he actually believes a parody of liberalism.
Besides, my former boss used to read and occasionally post here. When arguing with some idiot on the internet, it's good to know if that idiot happens to be your boss.:) He can certainly know when it's me replying to him!
Sorry, but I find TV's to be quite affordable. Chances are, the kid already has access to one. Keyboards and mice are a dime a dozen. Yeah, a sporty gaming set will put you back, but Fry's has wireless mice for $6. It'll get the job done. Most people could scrounge free ones from a friend as well. The Pi's being just the board provide the opportunity for the device to only cost $29. It's a whopping $50 for the case and power as a kit. That's still a reasonable birthday present.
If the cost is still an issue, the Orange Pi One is an even cheaper option at $10. Though it's reliance on community support since the vendor has virtually no reliable images makes it a little less entry level. It makes a better second or third addition after you already have a real Raspberry Pi.
IBM Color Monitor in 1985: $590 ($1300 in todays dollars)
LG 4K LCD Monitor today: $300
QNIX 2K (2560 x 1440) Monitor today: $177
Dell Full HD LCD Monitor today: $79
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."