Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 235 posts

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

#141

Post by mmphosis »

asddubs wrote: post #105
gabereiser wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not saying they don't exist, but to penetrate that 1% market share to be relevant they have not. I did call out things like raspi and such as still viable for tinkering but not the same way that I was introduced to computers with the Apple II and later the 386/486DX revolution. Around Pentium II things got anti-tinker and ever since 2007 it's been pretty much a consumer-only market. Walled gardens and locked down OS'…

at least on x86 you're still able to install whatever operating system you want, even if only for legacy reasons

except that on x86 you are forced to always run an undocumented modified version of Minix

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

#142

Post by alt227 »

Nokia tried this in 2009. They released the n900 phone which IMO was the best phone ever made.

It came with a full version of linux on it, with a hardware keyboard. Their marketing around it was that it was 'the hackers phone', and they started trying to build a community around it by launching competitions and advertising the best hacks and out of the box ideas which could be achieved on the phone.

I remember running aircrack-ng on it to crack wifi handshakes which could be captuered on the stock phone. Running nmap etc, war driving. It truly was incredible.

As expected though, it died in the water. There was such little uptake in the community that nokia stopped developing the Maemo OS it had made for it, and silently killed the brand. I sometimes like to imagine what could have been achieved if they had pressed on with that product line and the marketing which encouraged breaking the norm and creating something cool on your phone.

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

#143

Post by wruza »

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.

Idk, I just want to set two timers at the same time by tapping a custom button, and also make an “app” to open a gate for a delivery guy. And other simple stuff that doesn’t require a CS degree.

I believe that when someone’s idea of what people want equals to the status quo, they just talk out of their Stockholm’s.

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

#144

Post by throwaway4aday »

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).

Poor, sweet summer child. Their exploitation of your effort isn't creative freedom. For a poignant dramatization see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits and then when you feel like reading a lot of sad history just start reading books and articles about the recording industry.

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

taffronaut wrote: post #130

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 di…

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by wruza »

still_grokking wrote: post #57
saurik wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has done a non-trivial amount of coding work directly on my phone, I'll say you just get good at being able to type the symbols you need (though I agree it isn't great; but like, that's what BASIC is for, and I certainly spent a ton of time coding BASIC on my old TI calculators ;P). I also frankly find my phone to be an extremely pleasant device to "sit in one place and think", and given how many games…

I've seen the youth doing this nowadays. But just watching it causes severe physical pain in me. Everything is awkward, and painful slow. In the time you would have written a page of code on a desktop in an IDE you hardly manage to write a few lines of working code on a phone. Alone the fact that you can't use keyboard shortcuts efficiently is more than crippling! Not to mention the extremely tiny screen on a phone.…

It’s neither awkward nor slow, it’s just tooling that sucks (we have to type in a bare textarea, which is designed for text). Add some helpers and keys to the keyboard and it’s done. Like an email field makes your on-screen kbd have @ and . characters, you can add {} and [] and autoindent.

Best for thinking is actually walking around, while not being distracted by anything else.

Fwiw my best ideas were born in a bathroom.

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

#147

Post by hikawaii »

ergonaught wrote: post #54

Profit motive as the only motive, combined with scale, mostly, with a side of "freedom helps bad people do bad things" variations. ex: In many respects there is vastly more effort involved in making them general purpose computing devices. Why harm profits catering to people who want that when the crushingly vast majority don't want it, when they can't be trusted to use it (directly or indirectly) without messing some…

Pushing back on the "late capitalism" vibe, the market cares about certain things over others because people have a limited amount of everything and wish to spend it on things they want - the way you make billions of dollars on a video game is by getting millions and millions to buy it. This is, nominally - a good thing!

There's places where it falls down (mtx gachas, where individuals tend to all be overvaluing gambling dopamine in the same systemic way), but like - teenagers want to talk to their friends, not learn to code and if they did they have a perfectly usable computer

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

#148

Post by acomjean »

dehrmann wrote: post #127
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.

If I wanted to write a mobile app for an apple device I really can’t do a native one as I run Linux on my computers.

Yeah there’s flutter or react for app development. But it’s just different.

Samsung has a thing called “dex” that allows your smartphone to hook up to an external monitor, as does the steam deck. These machines are powerful enough to develop on, they’re just locked down enough

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

#149

Post by wongarsu »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #144
wongarsu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Poor, sweet summer child. Their exploitation of your effort isn't creative freedom. For a poignant dramatization see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits and then when you feel like reading a lot of sad history just start reading books and articles about the recording industry.

Oh, they are absolutely exploitative. But promoting creation and creativity can be done out of exploitative motives. I am sure music execs loved it when everyone started their own band and tried to become a pop star. A large influx of new talent kept the actual pop stars replaceable. Doing what GP suggested, keeping people dumb and keeping them from creating, would have lead to musicians being a much rarer breed and thus in a much more powerful negotiation position.

Similarly, Youtube or TikTok wants you to create the most funny, informative and creative videos possible. Not because they love creativity, but because it serves their interest.

Post reply on HN