beka valentine

what was end user programming like in the 1970s and 1980s?

for the average person, BASIC. by necessity, sometimes, because the software industry wasn't yet distributing as widely, and physical copies were harder to produce, etc.

very little consideration has been given toward ensuring that end users can relatively easily take up the task of programming their own computers. historically, more attention was given to this, in fact

software has this tendency to ensnare people with conveniences, even if we don't intend it to, even if we make it very user friendly and end user programmable and provide abundant learning resources

you're still learning _this_ program, or _this_ programming language

and while you might use FreeCAD and then manage to export to some other program successful, you now have to learn that other program

whereas, when you pick up a shitty Bic pen to do your drafting, constructing tangent circles is the same geometry Euclid was using 2500 years ago

the most open source un-corporate un-malicious-intent CAD programs out there, like FreeCAD, are VERY convenient but also in a way completely incapable of replicating the end-user-power of pen and paper

or even Freecad

sure you MIGHT technically IN THEORY be able to export files that other programs MIGHT in THEORY be able to make use of

but in practice, you're stuck in that one program unless you want to completely re-implement the design

you draw a line on a document using an Esterbrook pen and anyone can read it, and if you need to modify the document later, you can use shitty Bic ballpoint for all anyone cares!

now try doing that with a design made in Fusion 360

i mean like, take a completely out of left field example: drafting/CAD

now, CAD is an absolute boon, don't get me wrong!

but no drafter 100 years ago was trained to only use Esterbrook dip pens and stuck using them for all their projects once they used it once

the broad trend here in all of this is that there's a general lower regard for things that make users more capable and more skilled

from the person who isn't a programmer, to the programmer who isn't a language dev, the things that cause them frustrations go ignored

a lot of theoretical work is done on PURELY theory internal things, and so places where theory can touch reality tend to be neglected

more PLT people are probably working on homotopy type theory right now than are working boilerplate

the routes into the techniques of PLT are rather limited and sparse

and on top of that, there is also a general tendency for PLT research to avoid the empirically-linked dimensions of theory, such as the issue of boilerplate and similar things

but its not just opensource devs who are to blame here, because the research about this stuff isn't the best either

i mean, there's lots of research on techniques, sure, but academics aren't exactly fantastic at communicating these things in ways average devs understand

and user-friendliness is seen as synonymous with powerless, useless, etc.

so language after language has the most abysmal features, and tools, that are hard to use. and one of those persistent problems is boilerplate

and to improving the usability of languages because its good enough like it is and why bother making it better!

in open source, there's low regard for good documentation -- documentation isn't running code so it's a distraction, plus its hard to write b/c no one knows how

for example, let's consider so-called End User Programming, which is a broad term used to refer to programming done by people who are not programmers but rather just average people trying to achieve a goal

in particular, there are a lot of software-related skills which were either never properly developed into novice-friendly forms, or which were left to languish and complexity and die over the last 20 years as the idea of the novice ceased to be widely recognized as real

personally i'm ok with AI techniques being less well known but there's a deeper thing going on here which is far more important IMO, because it's also partially why LLMs have taken over

== this thread is in response to this tweet: ==

https://x.com/krismicinski/status/2072303376629444764