You should check out what they’ve been doing for years with Swift Playgrounds on the iPad
https://swiftreviewer.com/2018/12/21/swift-programming-on-ra...
Maybe not the best language for someone new but its widely available.
You can run almost any language from a web browser these days:
A lot of educational sites offer embedded interpreters like this.
It has never been easier to start to learn programming. The real challenge nowadays is maintaining attention...
It could just as well still remain a one-liner. Every system Homebrew is installed on has Bash installed (not the latest, but still).
Instead of
> /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/in...
It could become
> curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/in... | bash
With the install script containing a payload containing the current Ruby script plus a Ruby interpreter. Still a "one liner".
Ironically, they are also moving from bash to zsh for default shell. Again not an unsurmontable challenge (just make sure the bang is correct in your scripts, bash will likely still be around somewhere in macOS for the foreseeable future) but another little hurdle to mind.
Personally I try to use #!/bin/sh as much as possible, and Fish as my default shell.
On the up side though, clang has made the C/C++/ObjC world a much better place.
(OK, I learned Logo in school when I was 7, but programming became way more interesting when I discovered AppleScript's APIs to control all the programs on my Mac).
And you think a one-click download and install of Ruby would have prevented that?
Not to mention Apple also has Swift, and Swift Playgrounds and so on for kids these days.
So I get what you are saying but I think we are in a new world here.
For Python folks, just install pyenv/pipenv and you can easily maintain `system` (Python), Python2.7x, Python3.7.3, &c as separate environments. For Ruby people it's rbenv.
What will be left? Will it still be "Unix" in any meaningful sense just for having a C compiler and running an old version of Bash? Microsoft Windows did that, too.
You don't have to be anti-unix to do that though, any reasonable organization would have done the same. I agree with the rest though.
They may or may not be moving off Unix, but this isn’t evidence of that.