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

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

#151

Post by mardifoufs » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

throwaway4aday wrote: post #135

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 think your obvious answer is wrong. The fact is that modern smartphones are walled gardens with very large, powerful gatekeepers who want to protect their duopoly. The original impetus behind locking down the operating systems on smartphones was security but it evolved into a perfect way to ensure control over their market. There are no generic PC clones in the cellphone market, only small hobbyist or niche product…

I'm not sure that's true. AFAIK even Apple allows bundled interpreters for educational purposes on the App Store. There are tons of ways to program on both mobile platforms.

Here's just a random example, a full python environment for iPhone/iPad:

https://pyto.app/

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

#152

Post by eimrine » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

How about the attitude of businesses? They want you to run as much of non-free code as possible, especially banks. Need to run a non-free is not compatible with the idea of open filesystem which make people afraid about corrupting something. That's why people do not request a terminal and developers do not develop it.

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

#153

Post by eimrine » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

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…

> As if creating can only happen in an IDE and not in ProCreate or iMovie.

Short answer is yes. Don't you see how much video environment sucks to text environment? You can not do science in ProCreate or iMovie.

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

#154

Post by dTal » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #132

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 programming or creating, the industry wants you to be consuming For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few and smartphone OS developers would never in a million years promote learning how to program on their devices. From my end it looks like the opposite of all of that is happening. I went to…

>For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few

In a way, they are. They are gatekept in a way that is transparent to you because you find yourself on the correct side of the gate. Apple's gatekeeping is overt, while Google's is more covert:

1) They require a desktop computer - a powerful one at that. Apple requires a Mac. It would be trivial to release an app builder that ran on the phone, but they don't. Apple even outright forbids such apps, or any kind of interpreted environment. Apple also forbids installing things on stock iPhones without passing through Apple servers, and they require you to pay $99 and be over 18 for that privilege. This completely kneecaps the development of any kind of "demoscene".

2) They are ridiculously baroque. I mean awful. Look at this[0] Hello World - "the simplest Android app". Note the wall of perplexing XML, and complex directory tree. Note the phrase "You don't need to understand this code fully." This is not irreducible complexity, this is the result of an attitude that the only people who should be developing apps are professionals with a lot of experience and patience.

There is 0 room for casual exploration in the app ecosystem. Hell, I enjoy programming, I can knock up a fun demo in LOVE in under a minute, I carry a smartphone everywhere, and yet I've never written a smartphone app. Not once. It's too much of a pain. You wrote BASIC programs for fun in school? So did I, on my calculator, at a rate of maybe 1 a day. Show me the kid who writes smartphone apps like that.

[0] https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-simplest-android-app...

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

#155

Post by easrng » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

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.

ehh i do dev on my phone sometimes (Termux and sometimes in-browser editors) and it's an ok experience imo

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

#156

Post by rhaway84773 » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

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).

I know the term creator has its genesis from the word create.

But no, most creators are not doing anything creative. One way to see this is to notice there are movies made a 100 years ago that people will still watch today. There are books written half a millennium ago people read today. There are pieces of music written 100s of years ago people listen to today.

There’s almost nothing created on Instagram or TikTok that people will want to watch even a few days after it is created.

To be fair Twitter might have some posts of value but that’s because of the idea that almost certainly came independently of Twitter. Twitter is just the avenue by which it’s spread.

I think YouTube still does encourage the generation of quality new content to some extent that people may want to watch years and maybe even decades down the line. But that’s pretty much the only “creator” app that does that. And that’s probably a result of the fact that YT was created well before social media and mobile phones came around, so the content standard set on YouTube was fairly high quality. Newer “creator” apps encourage short throwaway content that can go viral. Not quality, creative content that can stand the rest of time.

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

#157

Post by tdeck » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

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?

By "phone companies" you really mean Apple. You can do this easily in Android, there are even full-blown IDEs for various languages in the Play store. Google created App Inventor as an entry-level way of doing this. None of this seems to be particularly popular but it's an option.

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

#158

Post by dTal » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

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.

This kinda begs the question. Yeah, writing a smartphone app is already painful, and doing it that way on the device would be ridiculously more painful. Is that an inherent property of the form factor, or the result of systematically orienting the system towards consumption?

I say the latter. I used to program with great facility in BASIC on my calculator in high school. I was not even the only one who could do this. The input methods available were much less rich than what a smartphone can provide, not to mention the display. Now, in 2023, the easiest way to write simple programs on my phone is by emulating that calculator. Come on!

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

#159

Post by easrng » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #154

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The industry does not want you programming or creating, the industry wants you to be consuming For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few and smartphone OS developers would never in a million years promote learning how to program on their devices. From my end it looks like the opposite of all of that is happening. I went to…

>For this to be true, logically the tools to create smartphone programs would be fiercely protected and only available to the chosen few In a way, they are. They are gatekept in a way that is transparent to you because you find yourself on the correct side of the gate. Apple's gatekeeping is overt, while Google's is more covert: 1) They require a desktop computer - a powerful one at that. Apple requires a Mac. It wou…

I agree with most of this post, but "Apple requires a Mac. It would be trivial to release an app builder that ran on the phone, but they don't. Apple even outright forbids such apps, or any kind of interpreted environment." isn't actually correct. They have a first-party app called Swift Playgrounds that lets you write apps on iPads, and other interpreters are allowed (Pythonista, Scriptable, iSH)

But yeah, native GUI dev is a mess. I wrote webapps all the time when I was in school though. Programming on a phone is kinda a pain because of the small keyboard and lack of browser devtools but it's definitely doable.

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

#160

Post by lozenge » Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 6:36 PM UTC

throwaway4aday wrote: post #135

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 think your obvious answer is wrong. The fact is that modern smartphones are walled gardens with very large, powerful gatekeepers who want to protect their duopoly. The original impetus behind locking down the operating systems on smartphones was security but it evolved into a perfect way to ensure control over their market. There are no generic PC clones in the cellphone market, only small hobbyist or niche product…

The speed you can input data into a smartphone just isn't conducive to creating anything. It isn't a grand conspiracy. On my computer I've never created something with the same screen size as the intended viewer.