Moving to high-level programming languages doesn't seem significantly different than what Vinge is (accurately, I think) predicting. We already reuse code when we type our code into a computer instead of writing hex by hand on a legal pad.
Just like human language increased in the complexity of the ideas it could communicate with simpler particles, the language with which we talk to processors continues to grow and pack more implied "meaning" into smaller and smaller informational bits. Functions, subroutines, classes, OOP...we've been moving in this direction for a long time.
I'm not smarter than Vinge, but I would say that as a trained computer scientist, he might have tunnel vision when it comes to what programming actually "is", simply because he was so thoroughly schooled in it!
I don't think they're that stupid. It's easy to perceive a large, lumbering company as being ruled entirely by PHBs, but Microsoft isn't a comic strip. People would not work there and enjoy working there if it was really like that. (Full disclosure: I live in Seattle and know many MS employees. It's not a city of Kool-Aid drinkers, people.)
I do think that the Zune initiative is pretty disingenuous and sinister, though. Microsoft isn't losing focus on Windows or whatever: from Altair BASIC to Vista, their core competency has been total platform dominance. They've rarely (not never, but rarely) succeeded over the long haul in a competitive market (IE?) and their focus is always on foresight of new, major platforms and early dominance. Witness x86, the best worst processor architecture ever to exist. Without x86 dominance, Microsoft would be nothing, and vice versa. Zune is an attempt to get a foothold in the latest and hopefully finally useful iteration of wearable computing platforms and lifestyle computing and whatever you're calling it, you know what i'm talking about.
Fortunately for the competition, J. Allard is a fake hipster whose street cred fools nobody, and the Zune marketing/bizdev team is full of tousled-hair creeps who hang out in all the wrong bars but have $600K condos. Enough money might get them a few adherents, but their sense of taste is almost entirely absent. They've got the right idea (long hard slog, Xbox-level penetration) with the Zune thing, but it'll still fail. Microsoft is just not cool enough.
And I think you've hit on the central truth with that. Established industries discourage hobbyists. They frown on autodidacts. They recoil in absolute horror at ground-up innovation, because it's something they can't completely control.
This won't become an anticapitalist rant (mostly because I'll keep reminding myself not to make it one) but it seems pretty clear that every fascinating, crucial generation of industrial hobbyist, from steam to electricity to electromechanical switching to tubes to IC to hex codes to kernel dev to OOP, has been utterly quashed by big business. Maybe not intentionally, maybe not by evil guffawing overlords in suits, but when's the last time you heard of a guy generating a novel new processor architecture with his C&C machine in rural Canada? He doesn't have the 65-nanometer process. What good is he?
It's the same with programming. As a new field, the challenges, tasks and frontiers of programming were within the reach of the intrepid individual. The best games were still a single layer of functionality. Even sprite-based games (Commander Keen, anyone?) were mostly developed by, say, a dinner party full of people.
Now there is absolutely no popular computer anything that hasn't been run through three or four separate levels of professional expertise and approval: from engineering through legal through gloss through marketing, back through legal, through sales and through distribution channels. This isn't all explicitly designed to shut out the individual. It's just the scale of the business. It's just the way it is. Remember Preston Tucker?
Well, obviously it can't be that way forever. I can't think of any good computer anything that was primarily designed and advanced by a faceless organizational entity (ooh, this one should spark some replies). Innovation needs a place in the market. Where is it?
I don't have a really well-defined or well-researched answer, but my general feeling is that much like film and music, a respected "indie" IT industry needs to develop. As intolerably pretentious as that sounds, we need a small-but-growing community of hobbyists, enthusiastis, people who author their own code and personalities who develop impressive, inventive things. Oh wait...we've got that.
But the difference between the FOSS/Linux/Unix/whatever world and the indie film/music insustries is simple: The big guys, the money guys, the corporate guys, they haven't figured out how to live and let live. They haven't tried to ape indie culture a little, found they were mostly unsuccessful, and allowed for a slight reduction in their dominance in the name of more innovation in the total marketplace (even if it wasn't coming from them). I've seen this happen over the past 50 years in music and film. Maybe the big fat money guys aren't so thoughtful, but the industry as a whole takes steps to maintain its own existence, relevance and flexibility. IT isn't doing that. Someone doesn't get it.
Actually, I'd say everyone doesn't get it. Look at other industries. There is a happy medium. Let's get there and be square.
I don't know anyone--anyone, from Apple employees to grandmothers--whose iPod is full of only DRMed music. The iTunes default AAC format does not have DRM on it. You can freely convert away from.m4a files. Only the songs purchased from the iTunes music store have DRM. Maybe what you are saying is just ignorance and not deliberate FUD, but either way, it's vastly misleading.
It's true of almost all other players, too. Zune or whatever won't be an exception. They will not sell if they only play fake DRM music. An iPod or a Nomad or whatever is perfectly usable without DRM, no matter what Cory Doctorow screams. Sorry.
No, your elite googling skills were misapplied because you didn't read carefully. Then, when you were corrected, you got defensive about it. How're those job skills coming along?
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Moooooooooooon rover
I believe you can operate during the endless lunar niii-iiiight
The truly rich I've noticed lately are the ones who build skyscrapers intended for the Sun to revolve around.
Moving to high-level programming languages doesn't seem significantly different than what Vinge is (accurately, I think) predicting. We already reuse code when we type our code into a computer instead of writing hex by hand on a legal pad. Just like human language increased in the complexity of the ideas it could communicate with simpler particles, the language with which we talk to processors continues to grow and pack more implied "meaning" into smaller and smaller informational bits. Functions, subroutines, classes, OOP...we've been moving in this direction for a long time. I'm not smarter than Vinge, but I would say that as a trained computer scientist, he might have tunnel vision when it comes to what programming actually "is", simply because he was so thoroughly schooled in it!
May God continue to bless America, and to our terrorist foes I say, dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
I don't think they're that stupid. It's easy to perceive a large, lumbering company as being ruled entirely by PHBs, but Microsoft isn't a comic strip. People would not work there and enjoy working there if it was really like that. (Full disclosure: I live in Seattle and know many MS employees. It's not a city of Kool-Aid drinkers, people.)
I do think that the Zune initiative is pretty disingenuous and sinister, though. Microsoft isn't losing focus on Windows or whatever: from Altair BASIC to Vista, their core competency has been total platform dominance. They've rarely (not never, but rarely) succeeded over the long haul in a competitive market (IE?) and their focus is always on foresight of new, major platforms and early dominance. Witness x86, the best worst processor architecture ever to exist. Without x86 dominance, Microsoft would be nothing, and vice versa. Zune is an attempt to get a foothold in the latest and hopefully finally useful iteration of wearable computing platforms and lifestyle computing and whatever you're calling it, you know what i'm talking about.
Fortunately for the competition, J. Allard is a fake hipster whose street cred fools nobody, and the Zune marketing/bizdev team is full of tousled-hair creeps who hang out in all the wrong bars but have $600K condos. Enough money might get them a few adherents, but their sense of taste is almost entirely absent. They've got the right idea (long hard slog, Xbox-level penetration) with the Zune thing, but it'll still fail. Microsoft is just not cool enough.
And I think you've hit on the central truth with that. Established industries discourage hobbyists. They frown on autodidacts. They recoil in absolute horror at ground-up innovation, because it's something they can't completely control. This won't become an anticapitalist rant (mostly because I'll keep reminding myself not to make it one) but it seems pretty clear that every fascinating, crucial generation of industrial hobbyist, from steam to electricity to electromechanical switching to tubes to IC to hex codes to kernel dev to OOP, has been utterly quashed by big business. Maybe not intentionally, maybe not by evil guffawing overlords in suits, but when's the last time you heard of a guy generating a novel new processor architecture with his C&C machine in rural Canada? He doesn't have the 65-nanometer process. What good is he? It's the same with programming. As a new field, the challenges, tasks and frontiers of programming were within the reach of the intrepid individual. The best games were still a single layer of functionality. Even sprite-based games (Commander Keen, anyone?) were mostly developed by, say, a dinner party full of people. Now there is absolutely no popular computer anything that hasn't been run through three or four separate levels of professional expertise and approval: from engineering through legal through gloss through marketing, back through legal, through sales and through distribution channels. This isn't all explicitly designed to shut out the individual. It's just the scale of the business. It's just the way it is. Remember Preston Tucker? Well, obviously it can't be that way forever. I can't think of any good computer anything that was primarily designed and advanced by a faceless organizational entity (ooh, this one should spark some replies). Innovation needs a place in the market. Where is it? I don't have a really well-defined or well-researched answer, but my general feeling is that much like film and music, a respected "indie" IT industry needs to develop. As intolerably pretentious as that sounds, we need a small-but-growing community of hobbyists, enthusiastis, people who author their own code and personalities who develop impressive, inventive things. Oh wait...we've got that. But the difference between the FOSS/Linux/Unix/whatever world and the indie film/music insustries is simple: The big guys, the money guys, the corporate guys, they haven't figured out how to live and let live. They haven't tried to ape indie culture a little, found they were mostly unsuccessful, and allowed for a slight reduction in their dominance in the name of more innovation in the total marketplace (even if it wasn't coming from them). I've seen this happen over the past 50 years in music and film. Maybe the big fat money guys aren't so thoughtful, but the industry as a whole takes steps to maintain its own existence, relevance and flexibility. IT isn't doing that. Someone doesn't get it. Actually, I'd say everyone doesn't get it. Look at other industries. There is a happy medium. Let's get there and be square.
I don't know anyone--anyone, from Apple employees to grandmothers--whose iPod is full of only DRMed music. The iTunes default AAC format does not have DRM on it. You can freely convert away from .m4a files. Only the songs purchased from the iTunes music store have DRM. Maybe what you are saying is just ignorance and not deliberate FUD, but either way, it's vastly misleading.
It's true of almost all other players, too. Zune or whatever won't be an exception. They will not sell if they only play fake DRM music. An iPod or a Nomad or whatever is perfectly usable without DRM, no matter what Cory Doctorow screams. Sorry.
Indeedykins, MarkusQ's quoteable braindroppings are synergistically powwow-provoking.
No, your elite googling skills were misapplied because you didn't read carefully. Then, when you were corrected, you got defensive about it. How're those job skills coming along?