21–30 of 271 posts
To be (re)read together with the Unix Haters Handbook https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf to realize that what we need is re-made LispM, Smalltalk workstations or the OS as a single application, framework opened down to the most low level part, in the user hands, fully end-user programmable, discoverable, and fully integrated. A 2D and even 3D/4D CLI as the UI, witch is the DocUIs with eventual 3D and video/mult…
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your machine)
My impression was always the arguments were more like "Well yes, but we have this literal building full of technical manuals that describe every bolt and screw of your tank - and we can give you a copy of all of them for free! And think about it - after you have taken some modest effort to read and learn all of them by heart, you'll be able to fix and even modify your tank all on your own! No more dependence on crooked car dealers! And if you need help, we have monthly community meetups you can attend and talk with people just as tank-crazy as you are! (please only attend if you're sufficiently tank-crazy, and PLEASE only after you read the manuals)"
(This was decades ago, the situation has gotten significantly better today)
The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
While I share the opinion that the command line is _the one true way_ of computing, I don't think this is really all that true. Computers are alien. GUIs are alien. CLIs are alien. Everything is learned. Everything is experience. Everything is culture. Learning, experience, and culture blind us from the experience of the novice. This is "expert blindness".
Why Western Designs Fail in Developing Countries https://youtu.be/CGRtyxEpoGg
https://scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/blog/novice-struggles-a...
The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
I think Windows very much wanted to be something different with COM. Instead of starting a shell in the context of the program, you'd connect some external "shell" into the very object graph if your program to inspect it. It turns out to be very difficult, and Windows has largely retreated to commandline centric architecture, but I think there was some essential attempt at foundational innovation there.
I would argue that the commandline has very much proven to be the best trade-off between being useful and being simple, but there is no saying if there exists some alternative.
> Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music." Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!" Did Linux distros actually offer support at some po…
I don't think that was the intended implication. I think the analogy is more akin to: "If send us a bug report, we'll fix it and ship a new version that you can download and use for free." In the olden days, you'd have to buy a new version of commercial software if it didn't work for your machine, complementary patches were rare.
The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
> On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context While I share the opinion that the command line is _the one true way_ of computing, I don't think this is really all that true. Computers are alien. GUIs are alien. CLIs are alien. Everything is learned. Everything is experience. Everything is culture. Learning, experience, and culture blind us from the experience of the novice. This is "expert bli…
Me: seems like my sort of thing. Me: navigate to linked website, see wall of text. Me: clicks reading mode Me: *193 - 245 minutes* Me: bookmark to read later; probably not
It’s a short novel. Putting it in a browser window gives it bad odds. You can also listen to it: https://youtu.be/KpaUg6WwdzU Begins at 01:30, 25 minutes.
That link is only part 1 (of 7). It's still around 2 and a bit hours of listening in total. https://www.youtube.com/@robertreads4323/videos