bcent
One of the big things that made me think about it like that was his stance on generic code. As in my experience it tends to lead to over-engineering, and less efficient code (as you need to account for more things).
It's takes some experience to know when the extra effort is worth the time; and it sounds like Mr. X very well slanted towards practicality ... throwing a little idealism at him where you think it's needed... AFTER you understand his reasoning... will make both him, and you better at the end of the day.
My guess is that SteamOS is a rather specialized flavor of linux ... akin to Android.
... Just my 2 cents.
The flip side of your argument, is that a criminal could store his entire criminal enterprise on a phone.
While I feel it's certainly an invasion of privacy to allow the police full access to my phone in the event of an arrest.
I also feel like some enterprising criminal might offer his friends the ability to remotely wipe their phones in the event of their arrest. Effectively destroying the best source of evidence against someone who uses their phone as a central point of control for criminal activity.
Not sure what a middle ground would be, but I sure hope that someone finds one.
Honestly, I think the best on boarding experience is a super-intuitive design. But that's just me.
Finding yourself in that position ... realizing it's not what you want out of life. Then taking the leap of faith, to turn your entire life upside in an attempt to find the fulfillment you're looking for takes a lot of courage.
I tip my hat to her.
<3 Debian.
I'm not sure I like the idea of a high level language, trying to control low level hardware. (seems almost counter intuitive)... however, if you wanted such a thing ... Node seems to be the way to do it... from both an accessibility and speed perspective.