11–20 of 80 posts
Long before that, I’d spend hours editing random INI files in windows games in hopes of finding something.
As a young child with only the scarcest grasp of programming, I spent endless hours using ResEdit to crack open and customize every application on my mac. Every game and utility was filled with its own surprises; graphics I could edit, tables of strings to pore over, dialogs to rearrange, menus to customize, and so much more. I never had a manual, but everything was so straightforward and clear I learned everything I…
So damn handy. And set me off on the path of programming for sure.
If you can guide, or shoehorn, people into using your service, and it's 'good enough,' you can make a lot more money than if you're doing custom one-offs for everyone, or writing a bunch of potentially buggy code for different variations, or having your team troubleshoot integrations. An important point too is that, if one person sees another person using the app, and it's a standard unified experience, that helps its spread too.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair. I personally would vote for not locking products down, but that's what we're up against.
We are the ones who did that kind of stuff, so we’re a filtered audience posting on HN about tinkerable software. We likely tinkered for a lot of reasons that didn’t have much to do what tech was like - we had unfettered access to tech in some form, for instance, or we were encouraged to do so by our parents or society or our peers.
Making our tech more accessible is a fine goal, but that’s likely not the biggest blocker for the next generation of technologists. Rather, I'm starting to think that, given recent advancements in UI, social media, etc. our belief of what makes a great engineer is totally off base for what we’ll actually need in the next decade.
I think there’s a bit of survivorship bias in the tech industry. Many of us got into tech because we were able to explore computers with few limitations. But I’m not convinced it was mostly due to the tech of the 90s being more open. We are the ones who did that kind of stuff, so we’re a filtered audience posting on HN about tinkerable software. We likely tinkered for a lot of reasons that didn’t have much to do what…
I think there’s a bit of survivorship bias in the tech industry. Many of us got into tech because we were able to explore computers with few limitations. But I’m not convinced it was mostly due to the tech of the 90s being more open. We are the ones who did that kind of stuff, so we’re a filtered audience posting on HN about tinkerable software. We likely tinkered for a lot of reasons that didn’t have much to do what…
edit: I think I misunderstood your last paragraph to mean we'll need to keep low level skills available so we don't lose the knowledge. I think you actually meant that we don't currently understand what the next generation will need to know to be effective which is a fair point, though have we ever known what skills the future requires?
/edit
There are still companies producing lower level engineering work, and the world still needs it. If academia and industry can't maintain the skills needed, bigger corporations will be able to run their own internal programs in collaboration with universities to produce the talent and those people would be paid handsomely.
With open source operating systems out there I also see it as being a recorded knowledge. Something that can be re-learned from, what will one day be referred to as, Ancient Codebases.
As a young child with only the scarcest grasp of programming, I spent endless hours using ResEdit to crack open and customize every application on my mac. Every game and utility was filled with its own surprises; graphics I could edit, tables of strings to pore over, dialogs to rearrange, menus to customize, and so much more. I never had a manual, but everything was so straightforward and clear I learned everything I…
But how in the hell do you read that source code. I've seen some gnarly C in my time but man what even is that. How are you able to maintain this? It's beyond me. Please explain!
I think there’s a bit of survivorship bias in the tech industry. Many of us got into tech because we were able to explore computers with few limitations. But I’m not convinced it was mostly due to the tech of the 90s being more open. We are the ones who did that kind of stuff, so we’re a filtered audience posting on HN about tinkerable software. We likely tinkered for a lot of reasons that didn’t have much to do what…
Could you give an example of a different avenue we could pursue? Your thesis seems plausible to me but I don't understand what we would do differently in light of it.
- train hackable LLMs on a corpus targeted for younger audiences
- offer built in “escape codes” to the lower levels of gaming systems like the playdate
- offer social networking sites meant to be customized/hacked on (eg myspace)
/edit These are ideas for how to bring tinker-ability to where kids are. But I don’t think I can say with confidence what is going to make a great explorative environment for the next generation. Bringing as much useful tech into the right places in kids’ lives, wherever they are and whatever background they have, is going to be the right start though.