gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/programming/4784

Hey all! For years I am writing my own personal software and/or upgrading opensource software with features suitable personally for myself. Today I saw a gemini article, describing exactly what drives me to do this (see link above). How about you? Anybody agrees/disagrees with this?

2023-08-27 · 9 months ago · 👍 skyjake, faildev_mode, stack, ResetReboot, Ruby_Witch, ahappydeath, ScotchSour, Bazmatazable

If Tron taught us anything, it's that programs should work for their users rather than major corporations and insidious AI overlords.

Also, it showed us that programs look identical to the people who wrote them? Writing your own programs is basically the same as cloning. That's what I learned, at least. 👍

(Silliness aside, it's a good idea to at least understand how to program even if you're not writing your own stuff, so that you can understand some of what is going on under the hood!)

Ah, really nice reference to Tron, Ruby_Witch! I have not thought of this. Apparently I need to review the movie (the original one) once again. Thanks!

I really like programming and so I'm always happy to fill in the gap between what's available and what I want. Most recently it was a time tracking app for my kids.

But, I'm also happy when there is something that someone else has made that I can just use. For example I rate the whole Google productivity range (docs and sheets in particular) as probably the ultimate incarnation of the "web app", they're just so perfect for the cases I care about.

That post in totally on point. Look at Android and iOS: Completely closed walled gardens where you don't have the tools to create for them or if you have them, they are complex, even requiring you to register to them and the ability to put things on it out of their stores is always behind countless clicks, tricks and the like.

And here I found a program that allows me to program my Palm V directly on the machine.

We should encourage people to learn programming and let them see it is not such a daunting task as it is made to be. Let them be dangerous!

@ResetReboot showing Flutter to my son we were able to create an app and sideload onto a real Android phone in under an hour, no signups needed.

For iOS you would need to put your phone in dev mode and/or sign up first, if I understand correctly.

Sideloading is an important difference between iOS and Android, it's a shame to gloss over it.

I've written a few simple 'apps' for Android. You can install from a file, after setting permissions. I used Java and Android tools a decade ago, and coding was about as much fun as filling out a tax return

@stack I've never actually tried old school Android, but I believe it ... it's one of the reasons Flutter is so successful :)

Going to leave a shameless BSD plug here and point out that the base installs of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Dragonfly all come with a full C/C++ development environment.

@Morgan I concede that on Android, the barrier is lower than with iOS. No signups needed. But... to be able to sideload something in *most* Android phones, you need to know the cheat code of pressing certain option five times to enable the "developer options" that allow you to do such sideloading, and that's my point with Android. I admit too that I never tried Flutter myself.

The point is the same after all: It is not put there for you to immediately try and work something out. You need to find the tools, where the options are; they are not there clearly and inviting. There's no interest on it. There's not even a small interpreter to automate simple tasks.

Android is kindo of like early windows, but worse. There is no command line, so if you want a tool that diffs files, or greps, you need a GUI app. Apps are full of spyware and ads, though. I guess no one expects you to develop on the device.......

@ResetReboot hmm, are you sure? "Install unknown apps" is a main setting on my Samsung phone, not hidden at all. I don't think it's connected at all to dev mode usually? I haven't had a non-Samsung for a while though so not 100% sure.

Interpreters and VMs are another big difference :) as they are not allowed at all on iOS. That's why there are no emulators for retro consoles on iOS but lots on Android.

You can download an Android phone emulator for free, and all the dev tools, and be up and running pretty quickly even if you don't have a phone. For iOS it's also intended to be easy--but it's definitely not as free.

I agree that it's a shame about the phone experience being quite "appliancy", no interpreter on boot :) but to be fair it's what almost everyone wants. For all the important things, like banking, maps and messaging, it's also what I want. I don't want to admin my phone, most of the time. Other times it would be cool :)

The thing with locking devices down is that there's almost always a way, or multiple ways, to get around restrictions. Either by completely bypassing and/or removing them or doing unexpected things that are technically within the restrictions.

Case in point, I have Termux installed on my phone (Android). In that console environment I also have clang, make, vim, python, a rust toolchain and git. It's sandboxed, but there's an awful lot that can be done from within the sandbox. There's even an extension that gives you a programming api so that you can essentially interact with other apps using programs you write inside termux.

Another example, the Zig guys wrote their own linker for MacOs/Ios so they can completely bypass Xcode. And since you can compile C and C++ using the Zig compiler, as well as link in code from other languages, there's not much you can't do with those platforms now.

I use GNU Unifont for terminals and programming. Use it as 12px-32px depending on the resolution and everything in between with 4px sizes steps. I mean: 12px, 16px, 20px, 24px, 28px and 32px. One of them will look great. On my 1024x600 netbook screen, 16px it's the best one.

writing own software

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