incidentally: when you're using the shell in *nix, you're programming. there's a reason it's called shell scripting. and i think some of the complaints non-technical users have with learning to code can also give some insight into why the shell is often so user-unfriendly for that demographic

if you truly want a "year of linux on the desktop" someday, that's worth thinking about

i guess i'm making it sound like i have all the answers or something but really i'm just thinking out loud, sorry about that

i guess part of my fear is that what we have now (three huge OSes that are user unfriendly in deep and fundamental, albeit different, ways) is too entrenched to ever really change

i have heard your replies and our takeaway for today is: kasran knows nothing about ux, operating systems, or computers in general, and you should not take her opinions seriously

@typhlosion idk, it seems like people have been saying visual programming is the next big thing for a long time now, but intuitively I kinda feel like there's an expressiveness lit? unless it's a DSL kinda thing like puredata

@aeonofdiscord maybe there's an expressiveness limit in the way we're doing things now. that doesn't necessarily mean it always has to be that way. there could be some insight we're missing

either way, i think this is a problem with an eventual solution. it's worth putting thought into

@trwnh @typhlosion I guess arrrguably you could say they're not really "textual" either, but it's hard to think of a way of visually composing programming primitives that doesn't require/impose a lot of incidental abstractions

@typhlosion Plan 9's #acme and #rc make shell scripting a whooole lot easier

heck, #Plan9 itself is infinitely more pleasant to use than Linux

it could definitely be modernized but it's a much better starting point than anything else I can think of (except maaaybe something based around a single language from the bottom up where the OS is just the runtime and programs can share references to structures more easily, but it'd have to have a very good type system)

@grainloom @typhlosion IIRC, #TempleOS had something similar to this where the OS, apps, and shell code were all in #HolyC

@USBloveDog @typhlosion it'd have to be something that prevents unauthorized memory access :/

@typhlosion

It is beneficial to corporations to keep the control that they have, and encroach further on what they don't.

User friendliness via interface is a viable commodity, but not access to higher control functions that would deter corporate interests.

Corps HATE modding, because it can use parts and procedures that the corps do not control.

@typhlosion That's okay, I don't either

@typhlosion this is unfortunate cuz my stance is Kas is a smart cookie and i trust her completely

@rebexorcist oh no this is a mistake

@typhlosion tbh if I could code using images or draw my code in shapes I could code easily.
I have a v good visual memory so if say, the way to make text red in bold

❤️/TEXT/❤️

(Where a heart means bold and red is the text colour)

I’d be able to remember it perfectly each time tbh?

@typhlosion
Thou idk that’s more what’d work for *me* and you might have meant more abstract images/visual stuff

@typhlosion counterpoint: computer programming is a process of expressing a mathematical idea in a “compromise format”: a format comprehensible both to a human and to a machine - an automaton with no insight.

Human history moved away from pictographic and visual representations of ideas to the invention of text. Humans are good at converting ideas to text. Programming languages use human capacity for language to produce a compromise format.

@typhlosion that said, this is also one of the things that make programming very hard for most people. Human language depends in part on the capacity of humans to quietly correct the flawed utterances of other humans (due to the redundancy in language); computers have no such capacity, short of cryptic compiler error messages that are only helpful to people who already have a lot of experience at programming, creating a barrier to entry. Computers require unnatural perfection.