Forest @forestjohnson@pixie.town

@j3s yeah, this is true, to me this is the greatest tragedy of our age.

I don't have any solutions / answers really, besides "it only takes a small group of people to maintain the code, and then everyone can use it".

I'm hoping that as usability pros age out of the workforce ( tech worker FIRE grows ) this can be more realistic, but right now it seems to be just hope.

@j3s I'm not even sure its hyper-optimizing for usability as much as its hyper-optimizing for increasing sales and profit.

There are tons of places where usability is sacrificed intentionally in order to maximize profit. A usable product wouldn't have planned obsolescence, and a usable product wouldn't try to prevent the user from unsubscribing.

@j3s if we reject / cancel usability wholesale, because it is the primary tool of surveillance capitalism, I think that works to undermine any potential possible future for computing outside of the context of surveillance capitalism.

It might work for you, that's fine. But we also need things that will encourage those who have never tried to write a program or host a website before.

And at any rate, I think the cast iron pan analogy is flawed. I think you like cast iron BECAUSE its usable. Its more forgiving and easier to use while cooking, and it lasts longer, it becomes uniquely your own.

I'd argue Teflon is LESS usable because it releases extremely reactive/toxic flourine gas at high temps. Metal utensils / dish soap will permanently damage it and make it more likely to degrade.

Have you ever tried cooking with one of those new non stick Ceramic pans? They're great, even better than cast iron IMO as long as you handle them carefully to avoid shattering. And I think the same goes for software: we can do better. Steal the usability from capital and give it to the next generation, no login or API key required.

This has already been happening quietly for years and I think without it, communities like these would not even exist.

@j3s as you know, I strongly disagree with this...

The pervasive unusability of Linux, server side / "production" software is a consequence of capital driving all "mass-usable" software development for the past 40 years.

Big capital created the computer usability industry, and they maintain a monopoly on it to this day...

Regardless of where it came from, I wouldn't be here without computer usability. I think most of us wouldn't. I still see potential good coming from computers, I don't want them to be like gas meters where only a fraction of a percent of the population ever uses them.

https://picopublish.sequentialread.com/files/lol.mp4

Whoever keeps sending faxes to my cell phone #, pls stop

If I get drafted, u can put me in the Navel Lintfantry battalion

@brainblasted I learned this stuff by trying to write code for games. I was able to make enough stuff to motivate myself to keep going by copy and pasting other peoples scripts and reading the unity game engine documentation. Tbh the unity documentation was some of the best I've ever seen, it had a complete code example on every page.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150208112941/http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Transform.TransformDirection.html

I can't believe it but they actually cut some of those old code examples 😮😥

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Transform.TransformDirection.html

Back then there was no free and good ide but they shipped it with a text editor that had a keyboard shortcut to "I'm feeling lucky" search the docs for the highlighted word. Being able to navigate a hypertext like that, of other peoples example code and the other mostly-in-context examples + descriptions from the unity docs, helped me learn a lot about the math and the way all the parts worked together

@tante

I think where the software runs (hardware), and who runs it, matters much more than license, and can even matter more than source availability

@vkc if you just want a quick matrix account that you can use right away, I can make you one on cyberia.club's matrix server. We also host element web at chat.cyberia.club

I was gonna try this with pinafore but life happens and now I'm working full time again

@dumpsterqueer What do you think about this one? https://github.com/elk-zone/elk

As far as I know no one has yet copied the mastodon frontend to try to separate it from the mastodon server