Re:Computers Aren't Fun Anymore (2020)
by danShumway on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:23PM
(#26161415)
In which case, I'm even more confused at your complaint. There are a lot of things I don't like about modern web development, but it is unquestionably, absolutely easier than it was in the past.
I spend less time worrying about browser compatibility, I have better tools now for building things, Javascript is faster. And if I want use the old methods, they still work. You can still deploy a website today using mostly the same methodology that you did in the past.
But very little of that stuff was fun. I remember trying to absolute-position images on the page because CSS didn't reliably support border-radius. That wasn't fun. I remember wondering how to embed Flash into websites because I needed a completely separate language to do something that can be hammered out in a day in a Canvas now. That wasn't fun.
Building a website is way lower friction today than it used to be. It's just that we have higher standards today, many people over-complicate it more than they need to, and our understanding of what is easy and low-friction has evolved and we can more easily see the problems of modern web dev. What was easier to do in the past on the web than it is today. I can set up a static Netlify site to serve images in 5 or 10 minutes, it's drop-dead simple.
In terms of treating computers like tools, this is something I actually do agree with, and do agree that if you stick with mainstream tools you're going to continue to be frustrated in that area. Everyone is different, this is not a universal suggestion. But my minor suggestion is that what you're feeling is the same frustration that has made people like me get progressively more religious about Unix philosophy over the years.
This is maybe not useful advice, but I just spent the weekend configuring the i3 window manager on Linux to integrate with all of my applications and handle modal keybindings, and it is genuinely the most fun I've had on a computer in a while -- it's so well documented and easy to work with and flexible and controllable that it really did feel like just chaining everything together and trying things out and seeing what did and didn't feel good. i3 is an absolute joy to configure.
There are programs out there that don't fall into the data-silos you're frustrated with. Matrix is a fun protocol to build on top of if you're sick of Slack. Image viewers like sxiv are really composable, tmsu is enabling some really powerful workflows for me with how I manage files. I love that when I buy ebooks and load them into Calibre I can edit the layouts and fix typos directly in my ebook manager. There is a world out there of programs that work well together, that are designed to adapt to your preferences and then get out of your way. They're just often not the popular proprietary apps.
I spend less time worrying about browser compatibility, I have better tools now for building things, Javascript is faster. And if I want use the old methods, they still work. You can still deploy a website today using mostly the same methodology that you did in the past.
But very little of that stuff was fun. I remember trying to absolute-position images on the page because CSS didn't reliably support border-radius. That wasn't fun. I remember wondering how to embed Flash into websites because I needed a completely separate language to do something that can be hammered out in a day in a Canvas now. That wasn't fun.
Building a website is way lower friction today than it used to be. It's just that we have higher standards today, many people over-complicate it more than they need to, and our understanding of what is easy and low-friction has evolved and we can more easily see the problems of modern web dev. What was easier to do in the past on the web than it is today. I can set up a static Netlify site to serve images in 5 or 10 minutes, it's drop-dead simple.
In terms of treating computers like tools, this is something I actually do agree with, and do agree that if you stick with mainstream tools you're going to continue to be frustrated in that area. Everyone is different, this is not a universal suggestion. But my minor suggestion is that what you're feeling is the same frustration that has made people like me get progressively more religious about Unix philosophy over the years.
This is maybe not useful advice, but I just spent the weekend configuring the i3 window manager on Linux to integrate with all of my applications and handle modal keybindings, and it is genuinely the most fun I've had on a computer in a while -- it's so well documented and easy to work with and flexible and controllable that it really did feel like just chaining everything together and trying things out and seeing what did and didn't feel good. i3 is an absolute joy to configure.
There are programs out there that don't fall into the data-silos you're frustrated with. Matrix is a fun protocol to build on top of if you're sick of Slack. Image viewers like sxiv are really composable, tmsu is enabling some really powerful workflows for me with how I manage files. I love that when I buy ebooks and load them into Calibre I can edit the layouts and fix typos directly in my ebook manager. There is a world out there of programs that work well together, that are designed to adapt to your preferences and then get out of your way. They're just often not the popular proprietary apps.