David Brin, in a piece at Salon.com entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Code”, complains:
almost none of the millions of personal computers in America offers a line-programming language simple enough for kids to pick up fast
Maybe Apple’s marketshare is so small that they equal “almost none,” but all OS X Macs come with Python and Ruby among other options. But wait, Brin seems to have heard of some of these newfangled scripting languages:
With the help of Flagrant Disregard’s “Motivator” maker and a photo from Wikipedia, I’ve produced this little poster to get you pumped up for your next big computer purchase. (Here’s a full-size version.)
Joel Spolsky (who started his career at Microsoft as a manager on the Excel team) has been writing some recent longer blog posts on a MacBook Pro in TextMate using Markdown. He describes the process in a recent entry. He calls it a “surprisingly good experience.”
He goes on to gripe about anti-aliasing quality (FWIW, that’s explained here), and beachballing from dropped wifi connections (which I’ve never experienced, maybe it’s an early Intel thing?).
Despite their adoption of Big Green Download Button technology, SourceForge still has an absurdly cumbersome download process. I know it’s annoying to just gripe (I try to see the positive side too); I’m just surprised that it’s still this crufty. According to the OSTG site, “SourceForge.net hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide.” But if the pace of modernization doesn’t pick up, I’m afraid that won’t be true for much longer.
