Vika's Hideout

Truly coding is magic. So glad to have learned basic scripting when I was just 14 years old or so. How do most people even live without utilizing their computer's full potential? This thing can do anything. You just have to phrase it correctly.

People click around, drag-and-drop files out of one program into another; this feels like a remnant of the DOS era, where the system could barely handle one program running at once (and TSR programs seem to be what might have facilitated early multiprocessing, being able to wrest control flow from the running app away for a moment with an interrupt). Applications interacting with each other's data should be seamless, and information flow can and should be automated. Unix pipelines were a step in the right direction; unfortunately, it seems right at the same time or in the immediate future graphical interfaces got in vogue. And users, who were most likely coming from DOS, worked just as they did. Manually.

As far as I understand, even powerful macros or scripting features some pro-level software included were seldom used by anyone but power-users. And I'm willing to bet even some of these power-users might've not utilized the full potential of these features.

And as the software around us gets increasingly dumbed down, useless "AI" features (clearly made by people who fell for the "AI" moniker and do not understand what are language models, and what they can and can't do; and what do users actually need) get shoved into users' faces with no regard for actual utility, I yearn for a time where people actually learn to utilize the full potential of the computer.

One more hurdle in the way is also the restrictions on the devices most people seem to own. The usual thing to have in your pocket is a phone; however, it's not easy to write software for a phone. No scripting environment, arbitrary code execution from outside the application's files is banned by mobile app store gatekeepers across the phone ecosystem. (Yet somehow there's a carve-out for React Native apps, allowing them to self-update bypassing the store review, sometimes changing the entire app completely — talk about unfairness!) No ability to quickly set up shop and code — the device's SDK won't run on the device itself, precluding self-hosting and necessitating a second device for development. Oh, and also the store registration, which I would even compare to the biblical Antichrist (Revelation 13:16 anyone?), if not for a certain billionaire appropriating the Antichrist talk already. Apple charges for it, Google charges too, and recently Google wants to make it really hard to install apps from third parties unless you're registered with them.

I am way above an average user now. My understanding of the tools I use is far above, and that is exactly the problem. It clouds my vision — I am no longer capable of understanding the average consumer and what makes them tick. Therefore I don't even have the ability to answer my own question — how do we put this magic of computing in hands of the people, and teach people to actually use it? How do we build an environment which encourages people to tinker? And the last question, that I might actually have an answer for — how do we ensure this power to tinker is never taken away?

(The answer to the last one is, of course, radical libre software advocacy. The way Stallman did it. He had a point after all. Also printers are evil.)