[HN Gopher] Computers Aren't Fun Anymore (2020)
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Computers Aren't Fun Anymore (2020)
Author : hacksilver
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-02-16 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (feifan.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (feifan.blog)
| andersource wrote:
| This seems to me like an apples-to-oranges comparison, and
| reflects the transition of computers from a niche field dominated
| by curiosity to a mainstream business asset (one facet of which
| is the focus of the article). Many people today are still having
| fun with computers and I dare say that the people who had fun
| with computers in previous decades would have fun with computers
| today as well.
| shakezula wrote:
| You know what's really not fun? That font and color against that
| background.
|
| If computers aren't fun for you anymore, at what could reasonably
| be described as the apex of what's ever been possible with a
| computer right now, it's not computers that are at fault here,
| it's you.
| feifan wrote:
| Sorry, I don't use/didn't test on Firefox. I'll fix that.
| [deleted]
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Could this possibly a bug when the author committed some recent
| changes? It's worth giving the benefit of the doubt here.
|
| But yea, I had to do a triple take with my jaw dropped.
| Grateful for Firefox's Reader mode.
| jwatt wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with Reader View:
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-
| clu...
| jbob2000 wrote:
| I am rewatching Star Was and it amazes me how interoperable their
| technology is. R2-D2 can just hook into the Death Star and begin
| reading data. There's even a funny scene where C3PO tells him to
| hook in to a port, only for R2 to be electrocuted. Their power
| ports are the same as their data ports, crazy! And Chewbacca, not
| exactly a paragon of intellect, is able to reassemble C3PO after
| he had been blown apart. And although his head is on backwards,
| he seems to be about the same as he was before being
| disassembled.
|
| All of their technology is so advanced, and yet so... analog?
| It's beautiful, they get to just live their lives; they don't
| have to fuss about with documentation, closed source, outdated
| libraries, missing binaries, copyright, etc.
| gwenzek wrote:
| Nice observation, maybe they just use one of those round
| magnetic USB-c connector everywhere. (That doesn't fix the data
| format, but it's a start ^^)
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> Of course you have an extensive list of things you wish your
| phone/computer/most-used apps could do; everyone does. You know
| the majority of it will remain a wishlist; there's almost no hope
| of the feature you really want being implemented7.
|
| I am the exact opposite of this. I honestly don't have anything I
| would _want_ my phone to do but doesn 't. Quite the contrary tbh.
| Why? Because I know anything I install on my phone or PC is most
| likely tracking me, and my data is getting sucked away into a
| third party black hole to be sold to shay marketers for pennies
| on the dollar.
|
| Likewise, any time I _do actually think_ of building an app that
| could solve a problem I have in my personal life or work process;
| a simple google search will confirm that apparently a few hundred
| other people had the same idea 3 years ago and here 's ten apps
| that will do what you were thinking of building.
|
| I don't want MORE tech, I actually want a lot LESS in my life.
|
| Like Jack Kerouac once said, "If you own a rug, you own too
| much."
| darig wrote:
| Society isn't fun anymore
| malux85 wrote:
| And then a bunch of complaints about building web-apps.
|
| SIGH.
|
| Why doesn't the author try many of the other areas of computing?
|
| Game engine development, live coding environments, artificial
| intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, Theoretical computer
| science and algorithms, embedded hardware and low energy
| computing, mobile development, compiler design, FPGA development,
| computational finance, distributed computing frameworks,
| blockchain development, automated theorem proving.
|
| All of these areas are super interesting and fun,
|
| The author saying "Computers aren't fun anymore" and then whining
| about web development is like me proclaiming that Earth isn't fun
| anymore because I'm tired of my bedroom.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I agree. It's easy to grouse about web development and forget
| the bigger problem web development attempts to solve: how to
| send or receive data (or kick off a process, or react to some
| event) from any computer (or phone) in an human-friendly way.
|
| This is a big area to wrap your head around. Best practices
| continue to change, risks change, technologies change, the
| scale of demand can change. It's complex.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >The author saying "Computers aren't fun anymore" and then
| whining about web development is like me proclaiming that Earth
| isn't fun anymore because I'm tired of my bedroom.
|
| I'd say it's more analogous to saying: Earth isn't fun anymore
| because I'm tired of North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.
|
| Web development takes the lion's share of computing people pay
| for which translates to the work people will do (we need money
| for survival). There are opportunities outside of it but
| they're few and far in between and highly competitive because
| few people want to deal with the monstrosity web development
| has turned into.
|
| I've worked in niche industries that typically avoid touching
| web development for quite awhile and even I'm being pressured
| to reimagine these efforts as web applications, containizered,
| and deployed as microservices even when that approach is non-
| sensical in context. It's pretty difficult to avoid anymore
| from my experience. It used to be incredibly easy.
| ticmasta wrote:
| >> Web development takes the lion's share of computing people
| pay for which translates to the work people will do (we need
| money for survival)
|
| This just isn't true. There are so many systems where the web
| component is just the tiny part of the iceberg you can see,
| but underneath some form of browser client there's a huge
| mountain of computer-based technology. Concepts like
| containerization and microservices are far bigger than the
| notion of current web development.
| feifan wrote:
| Hello! I'm the author of this post _wave_ This is part of my
| point -- the majority of software time and effort is spent on
| web-and-related software.
| [deleted]
| bawolff wrote:
| I think its a bit of a greenfield thing. In the early days
| there was new interesting things to do everywhere you went. Now
| a lot of the low hanging interesting fruit has been picked, and
| you have to go deeper to do interesting things.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| There are still millions of small scale cool things to do.
| More than previously even.
|
| Go invent your own filesystem and write a driver with FUSE.
| It will probably take a week of work and will be pretty
| impressive to most people. Go reverse engineer the protocol
| for your rgb keyboard and write a program to change the
| colours. It wasn't so long ago that I was blown away when I
| managed to make a crappy forum software in php.
|
| If you think computers were boring, it's not a reflection on
| computing but on you.
| packetlost wrote:
| > Earth isn't fun anymore because I'm tired of my bedroom
|
| As someone who's been working from his bedroom for the last
| year, this actually seems kinda true in a pandemic-induced
| depression sort of way.
| feifan wrote:
| Hello! Author here :)
|
| It depends on your definition of fun. This is my blog, so I'll
| use my definition -- "fun" to me is being able to get my
| computer to effortlessly do things I have to and want to do.
| Flow state and all that.
|
| To me, I don't find most of these areas "fun". Interesting,
| worthwhile, valuable? Yes. Fun? Nah. None of these areas reduce
| the friction of using a computer for the things I use it for --
| tracking my budgets, life metrics, doing research and tracking
| my notes/thoughts, and ideally a bit of digital and IRL
| automation. Most of that (along with my day job) falls squarely
| in the realm of web development.
|
| Computers and software are _tools_ ; they're means to an end
| relative to my interests. Tools should at least not get in the
| way, and ideally they'd be a joy to use.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I get where you're coming from. Sometimes I just want to make
| the thing and for nothing to get in the way. Other times I
| want to try out a new language or framework to see if it does
| things in a more fun, less fussy way.
|
| For the first kind, I'll make a single fullstack repo that
| hot-reloads both server (maybe F#, Kotlin, Go w/Generics?)
| and client (Vue/TS) locally on autosave, and deploys on
| commit/push. That's fairly frictionless to my expectations.
|
| You could also solve the metaproblem, make things more fun,
| streamline out all the unfun things in your
| toolchain/process.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| You may be my ideal customer. I hate modern web development,
| and while there are other domains to explore they are low
| level.
|
| For instance, Excel for me is the tool to use for a lot of
| numbers work, and I find Excel exceptionally more fun than a
| PL. However, it's not the way to make apps.
|
| Now, if I wanted to build apps using the fun approach of
| Excel, then I can do it now with my new and shiny programming
| language for board games: http://www.adama-lang.org/
|
| Yes, I wrote a language for board games! Why? Well, I'm a
| dummy. Ultimately, I'm trying to make it effortless to
| connect people around some state and what-not. I hate
| databases, and I have spent the last decade in infrastructure
| understanding the problem space.
|
| Now, I am finding myself want to effortlessly build the user
| interface to the board game back-end, and so here I am
| foolishly inventing a new way to think about building
| products.
|
| I believe your definition of fun is appropriate, but the bad
| news is that we are living in the dark ages. The only way out
| is to try to invent something, risk failure, risk scorn from
| our peers, and hope that we discover something. It's the only
| way out of the dark ages.
| feifan wrote:
| Thank you :) While I personally haven't gotten into board
| games, I love that Adama exists as a stake in the ground
| towards "better". And yeah, I agree with that closing
| sentiment too. This post is meant to be a rallying point
| for inventing new, better things.
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| I'm very interested in the emergence of high-level, low-
| tech DSLs that are highly adoptable by traditionally non-
| techy people. For instance, I'm trying to build a language
| specifically for UI designers.
|
| It's _technically_ code, but it 's meant for description
| rather than implementation, and it's designed to be easily
| understood by people who've never been exposed to data
| structures or flow control.
| feifan wrote:
| IMO high-level, low-tech DSLs are under-explored. Lots of
| possibilities there. I don't think you're necessarily
| limited to just text-based DSLs though; there's
| interesting opportunities when you pair with a UI. For
| example, see Pharo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuZyOKa91o
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| absolutely!
| akkartik wrote:
| I have something that feels close to most of the things
| on your list. But it's diametrically opposite a DSL.
| Instead it's a _low_ level stack where you can easily
| drill down to understand how anything works. Programs
| come out a little verbose, but I find it fun. Here's Game
| of Life running on Qemu:
| https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/105727343646129865
|
| Here's what I hope will become the shell for this
| computer (live-updating, postfix):
| https://archive.org/details/akkartik-2min-2020-12-06
|
| The big caveat: I have _no_ idea yet how to build a
| network for this computer. It has a screen and a
| keyboard, and I can probably get some sort of persistent
| storage. But that's about it for a while.
| totalZero wrote:
| > "fun" to me is being able to get my computer to
| effortlessly do things I have to and want to do.
|
| no offense but this is a weird definition of fun.
| feifan wrote:
| Hahaha fair :) I mean it more in a "flow state" sense -- I
| usually have things I want to get done, and I feel good
| when I can flow through them effortlessly.
| cccc4alll wrote:
| There are other hobbies that may be more interesting and fun.
|
| I've never considered computers to be fun. As you mentioned,
| they are tools to solve some problems. Some are interesting
| and challenging, most are tedious and grinding.
|
| Computers and software engineering is a craft, way to make
| money.
| slooonz wrote:
| > This is my blog, so I'll use my definition -- "fun" to me
| is being able to get my computer to effortlessly do things I
| have to and want to do.
|
| Computers were never fun in that sense. Probably never will
| be.
| feifan wrote:
| You might be right on the first part, but I'm young and
| optimistic enough to reject the second part.
| number6 wrote:
| Effortless? I am not that optimistic. Don't get me wrong.
| I love programming but it's not effortless. The best
| problems are the hard one:
| https://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png
| feifan wrote:
| I could've been more clear: the "using the computer" part
| (what you might call incidental/accidental complexity)
| should be effortless. The problem itself can be as
| challenging as you'd like to tackle :)
| number6 wrote:
| I can totally understand your grievance with all the
| loops you have to jump through to get JS running. I can
| get an okayish webapp running with the Django Stack in
| about two hours; when I use JS it takes me hours just to
| configure webpack. I just use intercooler or htmx
| nowadays and ditched React and Vue. The customers don't
| care if they use a SPA or a traditional one. They just
| want their logo in the corner. They even don't care about
| the round trip to the server when doing input validation
| as long as the input is still there after validating it
| and a meaningful error message is there. But still -
| there is a lot of boilerplate for CRUD Apps and views.
| Maybe RoR does this part better...
| benibela wrote:
| They were fun with Delphi on Windows 98
| type0 wrote:
| this is what counted as fun:
| https://computerhistory.org/blog/introducing-the-
| smalltalk-z...
| drenvuk wrote:
| You're ossifying and it doesn't seem like you realize it.
| feifan wrote:
| Perhaps, if you view it through my ostensible lack of
| interest in new computing technologies. From my
| perspective, computers have always been a tool to augment
| what I can do -- gather information that my senses alone
| can't; crunch data that I can't do by hand; automate
| repetitive tasks; etc.
|
| Most of that 1) relates to web development in some way
| (i.e. you get the data from a website), and 2) has gotten
| harder over time as software gets in the way.
| refactor_master wrote:
| How exactly does software "get in the way"? Everything is
| more free and more powerful than it ever was before.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| To me, webdev seems like the most "unfun" morass of
| bullshit in the software industry. It's fundamentally
| awful technologies stacked on top of each other in
| rickety spires in fits of money-hungry, Silicon Valley
| ADHD. The modern web is gross, technologically, and
| abusive, ethically.
|
| If it's all you live and breathe, I'd probably feel the
| way you do.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| Try https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/serverless-cells
|
| Zero local tools required to code and deploy a URL from a
| reactive notebook.
|
| I made this as soon as I discovered the environment was fun,
| my contribution is extendeding it to serverside programming.
|
| So it's a live coding environment and web development
| platform. Fun and pragmatic, exactly coz I felt the way you
| did, I don't anymore.
| feifan wrote:
| Oooh this looks cool! I'll check it out, thanks
| kickingvegas wrote:
| Casually observing that all the things listed above could be
| done from Emacs.
| dsabanin wrote:
| I agree with you. I think there was NEVER more exciting time
| for the folks truly interested in computers and tech in
| general. So many fantastic technology breakthroughs came to
| fruition. Things that used to be available only to research
| institutions and the military are now sold on Aliexpress for
| almost nothing.
|
| $1 microcontrollers, robotics, hundreds of programming
| languages that one can choose from, IoT FPGAs, and so, so much
| more. And what's even better is that computers are now
| everywhere, so we are no longer building things that are locked
| in a box on your table. You can command real-world objects,
| move real money, alleviate a disability, change people's lives,
| and all through your code.
|
| I also believe that the most crucial aspect in all of this is
| that there's finally readily available, well-presented
| knowledge about all those things. Incredible educators and
| hobbyists in many of the fields mentioned above spend their
| days trying to get people interested and inspired and help them
| learn for FREE. Knowledge and expertise on most topics nowadays
| are just a few clicks away. I LOVE this.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Once upon a time I though my job was gonna be "programmer" and
| I'm really glad it ended up being "artist" because even when I'm
| grinding on something I'm not into (and I do generally put some
| energy into avoiding that), I get to laze about a gorgeous
| tropical city sitting in parks and cafes drawing stuff. My
| computer's a tool that lets me _do_ something fun, not an end in
| itself.
|
| I spend a significant portion of the time I'm using my computer
| in Adobe Illustrator, drawing stuff. It is my magical assistant
| that will tirelessly do a lot of tedious work for me if I know
| how to tell it what to do. It makes it incredibly easy to do art
| in a fraction of the time it would take to do it with traditional
| media; I can, and have, drawn entire comic books by myself in
| less total time than it would take for a team of a half dozen
| people to do the same amount of work, because Illustrator lets me
| take some very different approaches. I still take longer because
| I am a slacker who considers it a great day if I have spent four
| whole hours working.
|
| Right now a lot of my work in Illustrator is commissions for some
| delightfully absurd porn. These jobs largely come to me over the
| Internet, along with non-horny work. I regularly find myself
| _laughing with delight_ at what I am being _paid_ to draw.
|
| But on the flipside I get the impression that Illustrator has
| _never_ been a prestigious division of Adobe, and I 'm sure that
| maintaining a thirty-year-old codebase is very not fun. I've been
| asking them for the ability to rotate the preview display for a
| _decade_ and they are only _vaguely_ beginning to work on it now,
| with a lot of lengthy excuses as to why this seemingly-simple
| task is hard. Being a programmer seems to have a lot of ways for
| it to suck like that. Some of y 'all get paid a lot more than I
| probably ever will unless I stumble into a ludicrously-high-
| priced gallery art career, but you also have to go live the
| Dilbert life every damn day. (And as a side note, if any of you
| folks making ludicrous FAANG money happen to need some weird art
| to give you something to think about to help you get through
| those long days of bureaucracy and worrying about your next
| performance evaluation, my commissions are currently open.)
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is evident that the author has not done anything with
| microcontrollers. All the fun that ever was is still there, with
| new fun rolling in all the time. The first time you see a
| physical object move because code you wrote changed voltages on
| visible output pins, you will know what I mean.
| erwinh wrote:
| Hi there @feifan, to inspire you to expand your definition of
| fun, check out stuff I made with my computer in 2021 so far, had
| a lot of fun creating it :)
|
| https://dialectic.design/project/genuary-2021
| cryptos wrote:
| There is a nice saying in german: "In former times everything was
| better, even the future!"
|
| I think software development and UX have improved a lot in the
| last decades. Build tools are sometimes really annoying, but does
| anyone remember how life was without them? Does anyone want to
| pull a GB of libs from the web by hand? (Obviously nobody would
| do that and prefer to reinvent the wheel with help of the "XY
| Cookbook"). The author also criticises "flat UI", but does anyone
| remember the ugliness of UI's in the nineties with all their
| borders and pseudo shadows?
|
| http://83.133.184.251/winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/30-...
|
| Or think about IDE's! Does anyone want to change IntelliJ for
| JBuilder?
|
| I think, what the author really means is the move from solo
| inventors and hackers to a complex and more or less mature
| industry. Not everything is fun in this industry, but it also not
| as bad as one could think after reading this article.
| ouid wrote:
| I think the future was decidedly better before, in fact it's so
| much better that almost all modern sci-fi is written in some
| x-punk genre, where x just refers to a time period, and x-punk
| refers to the vision of the future from that time period.
| feifan wrote:
| FWIW, I actually prefer those 90s UIs, not because the borders
| and shadows are "pretty", but because they're dense. Flat UI
| also came with big gobs of whitespace and padding ... to me it
| feels like bubble-wrapping everything.
| randcraw wrote:
| I think personal computers are still in transition, perhaps now
| entering their third generation. In 1980 they were toys of
| exploration used mostly by hobbyists and early small business
| adopters. In 2000 they became our portal to the world via web,
| social communities, and messaging. In 2010 they migrated onto
| mobile devices, but largely offered the same services as before
| -- at most generation 2.5.
|
| Having been there and done all that, the question now is, what
| comes next? But no Next Next Thing is apparent, especially for
| those who live to be wired. Personal computing has become a flat
| level playing field that extends to the visible horizon where the
| cutting edge user is no closer to the vanguard of tech utopianism
| than the Everyman who lives only within Facebook. And what fun is
| that?
| mrpf1ster wrote:
| Very light grey text on a white background is not a very readable
| color scheme :(
| rapsey wrote:
| You're not kidding. This is the most unreadable website I have
| ever seen. It is absolutely absurd.
| feifan wrote:
| Sorry, I don't use/didn't test on Firefox. I'll fix that.
| negativegate wrote:
| It looks like it's broken dark mode support.
| wang_li wrote:
| No contrast issues on firefox on windows. There's more contrast
| on that webpage than in downvoted comments here.
| Darmody wrote:
| It is unreadable, literally.
|
| The problem is "@media (prefers-color-scheme:dark)". If you're
| using a dark theme it'll use a light font color but keeping the
| light background.
|
| I personally hate when a site changes the default look based on
| how my OS looks.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| I prefer it because I want a dark theme everywhere. It's just
| a fault in the website if it shows me something unusable.
| agent_simon wrote:
| I see it unreadable in Firefox, but its actually light text on
| dark background in Chrome, Safari
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| For me it depends on whether my system is set to dark mode or
| light mode.
|
| If it is dark mode, it is light text on a dark background.
| With light mode, it is reasonably dark text on a light
| background.
|
| Maybe on Firefox it is taking the light-mode backgroud with
| the dark-mode text.
| tornadofart wrote:
| May I point out the fact that he is complaining about "UIs that
| tend to have low contrast/readability"? Unironically?
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(page generated 2021-02-16 23:02 UTC)