I Love Walled Gardens • Hacker News Board

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#21

Post by trialcode » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

rinich wrote: post #10

plinkplonk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is only half-trolling." Would a half troll be something like a half elf with a troll father and human mother? :-P I believe such a player class exists in the game Arcanum. More seriously, the author drowns whatever valid points he may have in trollish blather. As to the "endless tinkering that an "open" system allows is viewed as a useless waste of time by the vast majority of people," the value of tinkering is…

If I want to play the violin, there are violins designed specifically for letting me play them with little restraint. There are books designed specifically to guide me through learning how to play. Most people would hire an instructor to teach me the basics. That's all possible with a closed system. You can make environments specially designed to encourage tinkering, rather than leaving everything open for intrusion.…

And your point of view is that people who are passionate about hacking are obsessive-compulsive with an antisocial attitude. Nice one! My point of view is that you really hate the fact that the people you've always regarded as losers because of their introverted nature can play the technology game better than you. Your only hope now is for the rules to change to your advantage.

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#22

Post by rinich » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 6:01 PM UTC

tdoggette wrote: post #20

rinich wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I jump in here and issue a minor clarification? I am not a troll. I am a creative writer. I care much, much more about whether I'm writing in interesting and fun and amusing ways than I do about any pretense of formality, particularly in this piece. (I alternate between phases of more serious writing and more tongue-in-cheek. This is very much the latter.) I don't like the suggestion that the instant a piece of w…

It's not that it's unserious, it's that parts of it were clearly written to get a rise out of people. Maybe "flamebait" is a better term.

But it wasn't.

As I wrote elsewhere on this thread: I didn't want this posted to Hacker News. I was writing for a different audience of people, one that enjoys a little melodrama and overdescription. I didn't expect anybody in that "programming" umbrella to read this.

I'm sorry that it's wound up here, but it wasn't trolling and I resent the accusation.

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#23

Post by rinich » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 6:10 PM UTC

trialcode wrote: post #21

rinich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want to play the violin, there are violins designed specifically for letting me play them with little restraint. There are books designed specifically to guide me through learning how to play. Most people would hire an instructor to teach me the basics. That's all possible with a closed system. You can make environments specially designed to encourage tinkering, rather than leaving everything open for intrusion.…

And your point of view is that people who are passionate about hacking are obsessive-compulsive with an antisocial attitude. Nice one! My point of view is that you really hate the fact that the people you've always regarded as losers because of their introverted nature can play the technology game better than you. Your only hope now is for the rules to change to your advantage.

Look, friend, I was in the same umbrella as you. I used to like wearing black t-shirts telling people how conformist they were and how much better me and my friends were. Then I got older than sixteen and realized what I was missing in the world.

What the fuck is this "technology game" you're talking about? I've made one web site. It got lots of attention and registered ten thousand users in a month. That's as much of a technology game as I play, and I play it well. Am I losing the game of getting drivers to work on my Linux box? Yeah, but I don't lose any sleep over it.

The people driving technological innovation right now are frequently the people developing for the iPhone. The iPad's going to spark an entirely new wave of programmers that are slightly less pathetic. If we want to be juvenile and pretend there's a game here, my side's not the one that lost Wednesday. But there is no game, and you're free to continue staring ar your stupid little screen, and I'm free to continue telling you I think you're acting like I'm a dumb jock and you're the clever geek. That you continue to hold that delusions says more than anything I could say in response.

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#24

Post by rinich » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 6:13 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #14

"Instead, they will go to the carefully-screened App Store, and they will search for “How do I make video games”, and they will find a little button that teaches them and gives them a run-time environment in which to tinker." A small problem: run-time environments are not allowed in the app store.

I responded to that in the other thread about this article. It's a damn shame.

Can you make one that downloads to the iPhone/iPad and run natively? There's nothing in an RTE that needs to access Internet files, right? So theoretically you could program it in its entirety and have people download that.

I'm sorry I didn't know that when I wrote the article, though; certainly it throws a nasty complication into the works.

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#25

Post by tdoggette » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 6:23 PM UTC

rinich wrote: post #22

tdoggette wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's unserious, it's that parts of it were clearly written to get a rise out of people. Maybe "flamebait" is a better term.

But it wasn't. As I wrote elsewhere on this thread: I didn't want this posted to Hacker News. I was writing for a different audience of people, one that enjoys a little melodrama and overdescription. I didn't expect anybody in that "programming" umbrella to read this. I'm sorry that it's wound up here, but it wasn't trolling and I resent the accusation.

You posted an essay on the internet about a new Apple product and how it relates to the hacker mentality.

It includes such tidbits as "...people won’t be able to satisfy their computer curiosities. To which I again say: Good! Then they’ll have to satisfy their curiosities about emotional maturity and social interaction..." and that paragraph I cited above about obsessive-compulsive tendencies and an anti-social attitude.

It attacks the stereotypical perception of the nerd (especially the "hacker" type) while discussing the future of open versus closed computer systems. Who did you think your audience was? Furthermore, you end it with, "Only our chance to pontificate endlessly, to people who don’t think you’re as smart as your derogatory t-shirt claims." That's aimed pretty squarely at the group you're criticizing.

I really did enjoy reading it, and it was insightful and interesting. Whether or not it was aimed at the programmer audience, it's on a topic that's of interest largely to that audience, and it certainly seems as though it's designed to elicit a negative reaction. Calling it trolling might be an overstatement, but it makes many of its points through attacking a large portion of the people that are likely to read it.

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#26

Post by rinich » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 6:25 PM UTC

fnid2 wrote: post #15

tree_of_item wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only half-trolling. There are some very good ideas here. I think the author is absolutely correct when he says that the endless tinkering that an "open" system allows is viewed as a useless waste of time by the vast majority of people, and that they aren't completely wrong in that assessment.

They find it useless until that tinkering discovers something magical that they can't live without! Tinkering is just play. Play has useful evolutionary purposes to the individual and the group. Consumers not finding such stuff useful isn't any indicator of it's actual value to society.

I love tinkering and don't think it's at all useless. What I hate is that the same things that make computers so tinkerable are what make them so frustrating for all the people that don't want to tinker. The iPad removes all those frustrations, and in the process closes itself to tinkering, and I think that's an acceptable switch.

Other machines will exist to tinker on. Moreover, the iPad itself is opening to tinkering. If I'm a young kid who finds out online I can download a jailbreaker and completely hack up my iPad, that's exciting for me! That gives me an opening into the world of tinkering and fiddling that you have with these computers by default. Or, if I have an idea for how to excite people into learning how to fiddle with computers, I make an iPad app or a webapp that teaches them all those things. As I said in the article: If nobody else decides that would be an awesome thing to do, chances are I'll make one myself, for my own sake as much as for others'.

I understand the criticism that the iPad's getting for being closed. I've been a member here for however long. And to some degree, I sympathize with it. But people here are fucking ridiculous. (Not just here; Reddit and MetaFilter are just as bad.) They jump from "I wish it was open" to "The fact that Apple's closed the system is killing computing forever and plunging us into the dark ages."

I wrote this to Alex Payne in a rougher, impromptu format. I just wanted to explain to him why I didn't think it was totally bad that the iPad was closed. When I finished writing it, I liked it, so I rewrote it for my blog readers and added that little smug "Programmers aren't permitted to feel my breath on their skin" character because I thought it was really fun and because I have readers who enjoy irony and tongue-in-cheek. Then it got out to a wider public, including certain venues where people didn't know my name or my writing style, and now we have this discussion going on.

I hope this will stop certain of the people here from jackassing themselves about. (Not you, fnid; your comment was a great response to an attitude I don't hold.)

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#27

Post by rinich » Fri, Jan 29, 2010, 6:32 PM UTC

tdoggette wrote: post #25

rinich wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it wasn't. As I wrote elsewhere on this thread: I didn't want this posted to Hacker News. I was writing for a different audience of people, one that enjoys a little melodrama and overdescription. I didn't expect anybody in that "programming" umbrella to read this. I'm sorry that it's wound up here, but it wasn't trolling and I resent the accusation.

You posted an essay on the internet about a new Apple product and how it relates to the hacker mentality. It includes such tidbits as " ...people won’t be able to satisfy their computer curiosities. To which I again say: Good! Then they’ll have to satisfy their curiosities about emotional maturity and social interaction... " and that paragraph I cited above about obsessive-compulsive tendencies and an anti-social att…

I actually tried to write an explanation upthread a bit; hopefully that'll calm things down.

There's a lot of hyperbolic criticism about the iPad that I don't think is justified. This is a hyperbolic response. In some threads here and elsewhere I have tried to state my ideas rationally, but when you have hundreds of Greater Internet Fuckwads spouting things you run out of steam quickly. This is how I chose to unwind.

I have a beef with the Aspergers-aspiring model of the programmer. Not all computer people are like that. I'm a computer person and I'm not; my friends are computer people and they're not. But there are still some people who pride themselves in how lacking they are socially, in how incapable they are of relating with people, and they're sadly acclaimed by a lot of people. I think it's a damn shame.

Apple draws out the worst in those people, because Apple as a company exists almost to refute their ideas of how computers should work. They focus not on specs and feature sheets but on usability and elegance and things that make people who don't like computers more happy. And I love that! I think it's what's needed to make computers and computer people as mainstream as films and film people are. I'd like to be able to discuss Internet Topics with people without it instantly getting me pegged as one of those nasty Internet People in question.

So, yes, it was critical of people who wear insulting t-shirts. I don't apologize to people here who still do, because I honestly think they've got to mature themselves a bit. Most programmers aren't like that, and I don't have a beef with them, and if theirs were the voices leading this conversation I'd have written something less out-of-orbit.

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#28

Post by Tichy » Sat, Jan 30, 2010, 1:03 AM UTC

rinich wrote: post #24

Tichy wrote: post #14

"Instead, they will go to the carefully-screened App Store, and they will search for “How do I make video games”, and they will find a little button that teaches them and gives them a run-time environment in which to tinker." A small problem: run-time environments are not allowed in the app store.

I responded to that in the other thread about this article. It's a damn shame. Can you make one that downloads to the iPhone/iPad and run natively? There's nothing in an RTE that needs to access Internet files, right? So theoretically you could program it in its entirety and have people download that. I'm sorry I didn't know that when I wrote the article, though; certainly it throws a nasty complication into the work…

I haven't really programmed the iPhone yet, so I am not sure. However, I must admit there might be one way out: there is a JavaScript interpreter on the iPhone. I guess if you made a simple form and had it's contents be evaluated by JavaScript at the press of a button, Apple would OK it (not certain, though). Unfortunately JavaScript is quite restricted on the iPhone, too (I've heard it just gets killed if it runs too long, too long being on the order of seconds).

Not sure what Apple would say if you wrote an interpreter for something else than JavaScript in JavaScript...

Re: I Love Walled Gardens

#29

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Jan 30, 2010, 5:35 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #12

stcredzero wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example of a good bit: "It is not productive to spend an hour learning how to change the font on your computer’s clock. Even if while you’re doing that you’re learning about how computers work, you’re wasting your time and getting somewhere trivial very slowly." This reminds me of "computer education" programs that just teach how to use MS Word. Yes, this will get you a job, but you'd be learning at a more fundame…

If he said, "It is not productive for me to spend an hour learning how to change the font on my computer’s clock." he would be right. He makes these sweeping generalizations about what is or is not productive for other people to do. By his definition all the people "tinkering with" open source Linux, Apache, etc would be "non productive" since perfectly good commercial alternatives existed (and still exist) for them.

You missed the point. Learning how one particular widget for settings in one particular app is neither very general nor fundamental. Playing around with Morphic and discovering that every UI widget is a little code browser, and using the unified environment to discover robotics, math, and physics on your own is very fundamental.