News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on How Woz Gets Things Done.

Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by jcromartie on Friday April 24, 2009 @09:00AM (#577406)
> When we first started with Apple computers, it was my dream that everyone would learn to program, and that was how they'd use their computer.

Aside from the GTD fluff, this is a great article about Woz :)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by jasongullickson on Friday April 24, 2009 @09:11AM (#577426)
I still think this is a valid goal, and would love to explore ways to make it happen.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by pgebhard on Friday April 24, 2009 @10:28AM (#577525)
It's all just a degree of abstraction. Someone could say you were "programming" if you were using Automator. Explain more specifically to what level you think people should be programming their computers, because I think it will never happen to the level of writing actual high-level language source code, ala Python. People like looking at and clicking on/touching/interacting with pretty pictures/icons. I guess you might mean something that allows people to piece together actions (functions) to describe some goal they'd like. For example, "Purchase with CREDIT CARD -> from GROCERY STORE -> LAST WEEK'S GROCERY LIST -> deliver to HOME ADDRESS -> after TUESDAY CLASS TIME". Isn't Ubiquity trying to act as something like natural language processing in Firefox?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by jasongullickson on Friday April 24, 2009 @02:22PM (#577922)
It's all just a degree of abstraction.

I disagree in that when learning to program in BASIC on the Apple II, you are a mere PEEK and POKE away from the hardware; go any lower than that and you are no longer talking about abstraction (as we refer to it) but hard realities of electrical engineering. One floor down and you are the common denominator that defines everything we refer to as a "computer" (in the modern vernacular) and mastering this will provide you with insight which spans across all contemporary systems and many in the perceivable future.

Setting the "ground floor" of programming at anything above this level narrows your scope and greatly increases the potential of your knowledge becoming obsolete.

Someday this will change, and the basis of future systems will not be rooted in the hardware models of today, and it will be great because then we'll all have something new to learn.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by pgebhard on Friday April 24, 2009 @10:14AM (#577512)
It's all just a degree of abstraction. Someone could say you were "programming" if you were using Automator. Explain more specifically to what level you think people should be programming their computers, because I think it will never happen to the level of writing actual high-level language source code, ala Python. People like looking at and clicking on/touching/interacting with pretty pictures/icons.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by access_denied on Saturday April 25, 2009 @10:54AM (#578932)
I learned coding because I read a book. The book was a novel about a young hacker who wanted to own his own "pineaplle" computer but was to poor to afford one. I had nothing to do with computers at that time, literature-geek, writing not math. But than this bok showed me how computing works and that I could do my own VR. This was a strong motivation for me, strong enough for me to learn small-c on a cp/m machine.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Woz Gets Things Done by ice5nake on Friday April 24, 2009 @10:33AM (#577530)
Someday, we may simply program by having the computer interact directly with our own brain.
[ Parent | on HN ]