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Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#121

Post by hammyhavoc »

wongarsu wrote: post #98
pdntspa wrote: post #72

Because smartphones are designed to keep you stupid. Computer literacy means you are able to poke holes in their shitty abstractions. The industry does not want you programming or creating, the industry wants you to be consuming. Preferably with your credit card.

> The industry does not want you [...] creating Twitter, Instagram and TikTok would like to differ. User created content is still a major thing, even if we stopped calling it web 2.0. Most of that just happens in other domains than programming (though Roblox exists, so programming does happen too).

There's a world of difference in the creativity that goes into a photo of lunch or a selfie versus producing something of substance.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#123

Post by masklinn »

diego_moita wrote: post #106
nindalf wrote: post #85

The answer is obvious - most people don’t want to do this. They want to text or call a friend, look up the weather or sports, stream some entertainment or read the news. They’re experts in their own domains and don’t have the time or inclination to learn programming. There’s some heavy condescension in this thread, claiming that not programming “keeps people stupid”. As if creating can only happen in an IDE and not i…

It is more than obvious if you look at the broad picture: computers on the 80s were sold to a few million people, most of them with, at least, high school degree and math inclinations (a.k.a. "nerds"). Smartphones, o.t.o.h. are sold to billions of people. The scale is just immense and is a completely different audience.

An other component is that computers in the 80s largely did not have the power to hide their workings from users. In fact the cheaper ones required basic knowledge of operations in order to just use otherwise they were glorified heaters.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#124

Post by zby »

danuker wrote: post #5

I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols, distracting from the problem at hand. Coding requires deep thought, but phones are optimized for moving around rather than sitting in one place and thinking. As such, use cases like maps, calendars, communication and alarms get priority. The reason people buy a phone is…

Input is one thing - but also how much of a program can you see on a smartphone screen?

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#125

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

I grew up programming in late 1970s. Early computers were simple, simple to understand, and simple to program - whether in assembler, BASIC, or anything else.

The closest modern equivalent to the early 70s/80s computers as something to learn programming on are things like the Arduino.

Smartphones just don't compare - they are inherently complex, not fully open/documented anyways, and tooling doesn't help. Can't even develop for an iPhone without owning a Mac too.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#126

Post by javajosh »

Nindalf is correct: the primary reason is lack of desire.

But there are other reasons - these are the reasons that people who already like to program don't do so on their phones. Optimistically, improved interfaces (e.g. AI listening to your words and groking your system diagrams) will improve the programmability of phones perhaps even beyond the laptop.

The difference between Apple IIe and the iPhone 12 is scale. 40 years of Moore's law means the phone you hold in your hand has roughly 2^10 more components at 1/100 the volume. Early computers, you could look at them with your eyes, fix (and break) them with your hands. The same was true of the experience of using a computer - it was all very "close to the metal", with small, simple abstractions (like booting into BASIC, or restarting your computer with a new floppy in it - computers were essentially stateless).

It feels like a stroke of luck to have grown up alongside each iteration of PC technology because I can see how it would be overwhelming to try to understand it starting from 0.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#127

Post by dehrmann »

nindalf wrote: post #85

The answer is obvious - most people don’t want to do this. They want to text or call a friend, look up the weather or sports, stream some entertainment or read the news. They’re experts in their own domains and don’t have the time or inclination to learn programming. There’s some heavy condescension in this thread, claiming that not programming “keeps people stupid”. As if creating can only happen in an IDE and not i…

I work in tech as a software engineer and I (mostly) don't want to do this. I want my phone to work out of the box.

The other thing I'd add is that even when I want to write a mobile app, doing it on the device itself would be a nightmare. Composing emails is already hard enough.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#128

Post by paulryanrogers »

amelius wrote: post #113
nindalf wrote: post #85

The answer is obvious - most people don’t want to do this. They want to text or call a friend, look up the weather or sports, stream some entertainment or read the news. They’re experts in their own domains and don’t have the time or inclination to learn programming. There’s some heavy condescension in this thread, claiming that not programming “keeps people stupid”. As if creating can only happen in an IDE and not i…

> The answer is obvious - most people don’t want to do this. There are still millions of people who want to do this. The question is more: why do phone companies actively discourage it?

Because they're selling to the least common denominator, not to a niche of power users. With time the power will be more evenly distributed. But that will probably require new methods and tooling that haven't even been invented yet.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#129

Post by iamdamian »

polishdude20 wrote: post #99
nindalf wrote: post #85

The answer is obvious - most people don’t want to do this. They want to text or call a friend, look up the weather or sports, stream some entertainment or read the news. They’re experts in their own domains and don’t have the time or inclination to learn programming. There’s some heavy condescension in this thread, claiming that not programming “keeps people stupid”. As if creating can only happen in an IDE and not i…

Yeah and to add to this: People, in general, want to connect with other people. Programming is a means to that end. Only for a small part of the population is programming in itself an end.

> Only for a small part of the population is programming in itself an end.

What about in absolute terms? How many millions of developers would write or run code on their phone / tablet if they could?

Re: Ask HN: Why don't smartphones encourage programming like early 80s computers?

#130

Post by taffronaut »

1. 80s computers were basically a mechanical keyboard connected to a low resolution CRT display (typically a TV). Text entry was the default. There was no GUI or pointing device. For smartphones, text entry isn't the default.

2. In the 80s seeing your choice of text on a screen was something really new to most people. Teletext would not be universal until the end of the decade. Nothing in the house had even a text display. Calculators were numeric only. These days, everything has a display.

3. There were no polished programs to compete with. A lot of early games were very simple. There was no App Store or Steam. You could write a Tic Tac Toe game never having seen a commercial implementation. Even if it was bad, your friends would be impressed.

If you want inclusive coding, Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373052 . The 40 characters wide Basic terminal was of its time.

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