I love tinkering and don't think it's at all useless. What I hate is that the same things that make computers so tinkerable are what make them so frustrating for all the people that don't want to tinker. The iPad removes all those frustrations, and in the process closes itself to tinkering, and I think that's an acceptable switch.
Other machines will exist to tinker on. Moreover, the iPad itself is opening to tinkering. If I'm a young kid who finds out online I can download a jailbreaker and completely hack up my iPad, that's exciting for me! That gives me an opening into the world of tinkering and fiddling that you have with these computers by default. Or, if I have an idea for how to excite people into learning how to fiddle with computers, I make an iPad app or a webapp that teaches them all those things. As I said in the article: If nobody else decides that would be an awesome thing to do, chances are I'll make one myself, for my own sake as much as for others'.
I understand the criticism that the iPad's getting for being closed. I've been a member here for however long. And to some degree, I sympathize with it. But people here are fucking ridiculous. (Not just here; Reddit and MetaFilter are just as bad.) They jump from "I wish it was open" to "The fact that Apple's closed the system is killing computing forever and plunging us into the dark ages."
I wrote this to Alex Payne in a rougher, impromptu format. I just wanted to explain to him why I didn't think it was totally bad that the iPad was closed. When I finished writing it, I liked it, so I rewrote it for my blog readers and added that little smug "Programmers aren't permitted to feel my breath on their skin" character because I thought it was really fun and because I have readers who enjoy irony and tongue-in-cheek. Then it got out to a wider public, including certain venues where people didn't know my name or my writing style, and now we have this discussion going on.
I hope this will stop certain of the people here from jackassing themselves about. (Not you, fnid; your comment was a great response to an attitude I don't hold.)
I responded to that in the other thread about this article. It's a damn shame.
Can you make one that downloads to the iPhone/iPad and run natively? There's nothing in an RTE that needs to access Internet files, right? So theoretically you could program it in its entirety and have people download that.
I'm sorry I didn't know that when I wrote the article, though; certainly it throws a nasty complication into the works.
I haven't really programmed the iPhone yet, so I am not sure. However, I must admit there might be one way out: there is a JavaScript interpreter on the iPhone. I guess if you made a simple form and had it's contents be evaluated by JavaScript at the press of a button, Apple would OK it (not certain, though). Unfortunately JavaScript is quite restricted on the iPhone, too (I've heard it just gets killed if it runs too long, too long being on the order of seconds).
Not sure what Apple would say if you wrote an interpreter for something else than JavaScript in JavaScript...
Bullshit. If somebody broke UI rules in as brilliant a way as Cummings did it, Apple would accept the app. Meanwhile, publishing companies reject poets with shitty punctuation every day. The fact that Cummings was published has a lot to do with the fact that his punctuation was awesome. (Also, Cummings wrote more typical sonnets before he started experimenting, so there was precedent.)
If you want to be experimental, be it online. Nobody can deny access to your HTML5 creations. In fact, Apple's one of the biggest pushers of compliant modern web browsing.
If I want to play the violin, there are violins designed specifically for letting me play them with little restraint. There are books designed specifically to guide me through learning how to play. Most people would hire an instructor to teach me the basics.
That's all possible with a closed system. You can make environments specially designed to encourage tinkering, rather than leaving everything open for intrusion. You can write guides teaching people things that they wouldn't normally see on a closed system. It doesn't exist by default like it does perhaps on a system wherein everything is viewable, but you can still create it. So it won't kill programming.
It's not like Apple's declaring a holocaust on all other computers. If you're so obsessed with tinkering that you think it's worth fucking around instead of learning to tinker in more meaningful ways — though I must admit that from my biased point of view that always seems like the college graduate whose poetry reads like high school — the other systems are all available, and will be for a long, long time; it won't be long before somebody releases an open source equivalent of the iPad for stupid people to go around claiming is objectively better in every way and for ordinary tinkerers to buy and tinker with.
But I'd like to address this troll accusation, because I find it unbecoming. I am not a troll. I have been a productive and contributing member of this community for nearly two years; even though my respect for it has constantly declined, I come in here to debate with people all the time. I don't do it to fuck around with your head or to provoke people. I do it because I enjoy stating my point of view, which is frequently very different from the mass opinions here.
My blog is not written for Hacker News. My blog is written for the potpourri audience of artists and literati and young adults that enjoy long essays written about random subjects. It's not a coding blog, so even when I write about subjects that interest people here I'm not writing it in a way that'll appeal to readers here. This article was submitted three times; the first time I asked that it be killed and the submitter graciously killed it for me. This is not of a tone appropriate for Hacker News.
But that does not make it a troll post. I wrote a post last month describing fictional Listerine commercials. I'm sure if it had been submitted here people would have been boneheaded to announce the commercials were fake and I was trolling. There are smart people here, but there are not very diverse people.
Since no one said it would, you are knocking down strawmen. Nothing Apple could do, now or in the future will kill programming. That is obvious.
"This article was submitted three times; the first time I asked that it be killed and the submitter graciously killed it for me. This is not of a tone appropriate for Hacker News."
This is fair. And very gentlemanly of you to ask that a submission be killed for inappropriateness. I read it as a submission on HN and in the context of HN it certainly sounds trollish.
as is "If you're so obsessed with tinkering that you think it's worth fucking around ". On Hacker News, you call people who love to tinker with computers obsessive and label what they do "fucking around" and "non meaningful" (as judged by your Omniscient Wisdom?) and still claim not to be trolling?
I originally wrote this in response to Alex Payne; I emailed him an off-the-cuff response, then decided it might be worth revising a little and publishing. He wrote: Perhaps the iPad signals an end to the “hacker era” of digital history. I disagreed with the sentiment. So, not killing programming, but killing the hacker era.
On Hacker News, you call people who love to tinker with computers obsessive and label what they do "fucking around" and "non meaningful" (as judged by your Omniscient Wisdom?) and still claim not to be trolling?
I'm in the community because I think people here know what they're talking about, not because I agree with their life views. In a past life (by which I mean last year) I got engulfed in a huge and marvelous debate here over that. I don't like the hacker mindset here and I think the entrepreneurial one we see here is sadly limited in scope. A lot of the things HN really enjoys I find a little disturbing and sad.
I'm not pretending my opinion is Omniscient Wisdom. Your saying it makes the both of us looks silly. I don't come from quite the background a lot of this community does, and my worldviews are slightly different, but I don't lash out at people that disagree with me — unless it's a debate happening about something I wrote, in which case I maintain the tone I started in the article to help and elucidate things.
If we want to make this a discussion of the worldview in question, and of exactly what I believe about what, then by all means we can have that, but the fact that your attitude's more snark than it is polite engagement suggested to me that you're more into shooting me down under false pretenses.
And your point of view is that people who are passionate about hacking are obsessive-compulsive with an antisocial attitude. Nice one!
My point of view is that you really hate the fact that the people you've always regarded as losers because of their introverted nature can play the technology game better than you. Your only hope now is for the rules to change to your advantage.
Look, friend, I was in the same umbrella as you. I used to like wearing black t-shirts telling people how conformist they were and how much better me and my friends were. Then I got older than sixteen and realized what I was missing in the world.
What the fuck is this "technology game" you're talking about? I've made one web site. It got lots of attention and registered ten thousand users in a month. That's as much of a technology game as I play, and I play it well. Am I losing the game of getting drivers to work on my Linux box? Yeah, but I don't lose any sleep over it.
The people driving technological innovation right now are frequently the people developing for the iPhone. The iPad's going to spark an entirely new wave of programmers that are slightly less pathetic. If we want to be juvenile and pretend there's a game here, my side's not the one that lost Wednesday. But there is no game, and you're free to continue staring ar your stupid little screen, and I'm free to continue telling you I think you're acting like I'm a dumb jock and you're the clever geek. That you continue to hold that delusions says more than anything I could say in response.
Can I jump in here and issue a minor clarification?
I am not a troll. I am a creative writer. I care much, much more about whether I'm writing in interesting and fun and amusing ways than I do about any pretense of formality, particularly in this piece. (I alternate between phases of more serious writing and more tongue-in-cheek. This is very much the latter.)
I don't like the suggestion that the instant a piece of writing stops being formal or serious, it becomes a troll piece. In this case in particular, I thought that there was a very specific reason to write it in the way that I did: Partly it's to highlight the fact that I think this particular criticism of Apple is a tad silly, for a variety of reasons. But it also deflates me, and indicates that perhaps this argument, while relevant, should not be taken as my attempt to speak the word of God.
As I wrote elsewhere on this thread: I didn't want this posted to Hacker News. I was writing for a different audience of people, one that enjoys a little melodrama and overdescription. I didn't expect anybody in that "programming" umbrella to read this.
I'm sorry that it's wound up here, but it wasn't trolling and I resent the accusation.
You posted an essay on the internet about a new Apple product and how it relates to the hacker mentality.
It includes such tidbits as "...people won’t be able to satisfy their computer curiosities. To which I again say: Good! Then they’ll have to satisfy their curiosities about emotional maturity and social interaction..." and that paragraph I cited above about obsessive-compulsive tendencies and an anti-social attitude.
It attacks the stereotypical perception of the nerd (especially the "hacker" type) while discussing the future of open versus closed computer systems. Who did you think your audience was? Furthermore, you end it with, "Only our chance to pontificate endlessly, to people who don’t think you’re as smart as your derogatory t-shirt claims." That's aimed pretty squarely at the group you're criticizing.
I really did enjoy reading it, and it was insightful and interesting. Whether or not it was aimed at the programmer audience, it's on a topic that's of interest largely to that audience, and it certainly seems as though it's designed to elicit a negative reaction. Calling it trolling might be an overstatement, but it makes many of its points through attacking a large portion of the people that are likely to read it.
I actually tried to write an explanation upthread a bit; hopefully that'll calm things down.
There's a lot of hyperbolic criticism about the iPad that I don't think is justified. This is a hyperbolic response. In some threads here and elsewhere I have tried to state my ideas rationally, but when you have hundreds of Greater Internet Fuckwads spouting things you run out of steam quickly. This is how I chose to unwind.
I have a beef with the Aspergers-aspiring model of the programmer. Not all computer people are like that. I'm a computer person and I'm not; my friends are computer people and they're not. But there are still some people who pride themselves in how lacking they are socially, in how incapable they are of relating with people, and they're sadly acclaimed by a lot of people. I think it's a damn shame.
Apple draws out the worst in those people, because Apple as a company exists almost to refute their ideas of how computers should work. They focus not on specs and feature sheets but on usability and elegance and things that make people who don't like computers more happy. And I love that! I think it's what's needed to make computers and computer people as mainstream as films and film people are. I'd like to be able to discuss Internet Topics with people without it instantly getting me pegged as one of those nasty Internet People in question.
So, yes, it was critical of people who wear insulting t-shirts. I don't apologize to people here who still do, because I honestly think they've got to mature themselves a bit. Most programmers aren't like that, and I don't have a beef with them, and if theirs were the voices leading this conversation I'd have written something less out-of-orbit.
The argument I put forward (and I completely respect people that disagree with it) is that yes, it's okay to let somebody else control the clock font, because the clock font doesn't matter. I'd rather not have the choice to change it, because I've got twitchy fingers and am terribly good at procrastination.
Sure, the clock font doesn't matter. But the limiting form of the formula ("It's OK to let someone else control X because X doesn't matter") for lots of values of X is a recipe for total disaster.
Nobody expects Letters to become the new default OSX Mail client. Rather, it will probably be a successful niche app for power users.
An app like Letters would never see the light of day on the iPhone because it "duplicates system functionality." Mail is good enough, so the logic goes.
Why should we have to have the horrible experience...
I don't think it's asking to have our cake and eat it, to be able to play with the toys we've bought?
Should all developers just stick to linux and windows ? - Your walled garden will be a much duller place for it.
I know; I was informed of that after I wrote it. Shame. Web-accessible runtimes are still a possibility, but certainly that's not as cut-and-dry as having one in the App Store would be.
That's a very apt analogy. I've got nothing against kitchens, but I think it would be nice if there were cheap gourmet lessons out there also. (My analogy is much worse than yours.)
0. Invent an enormous blogging platform and be an all-around cool guy
Garry links frequently get my auto-upvote.