There can be a better way.
Notices by Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social), page 3
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:41:32 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) -
Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:41:26 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) @ACTupper it's a great introduction to programming.
It is not a good tool for empowering non-programmers.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:40:24 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) Part of the problem is one of approachability.
BASIC still works, you know? I wrote programs in FreeBASIC as a kid.
Python is out there, and is fairly easy to get started with, and there are plenty of good guides and tutorials.
But they are not *approachable* you know?
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:40:23 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) And then there's the whole issue of GUIs.
I have never written a graphical application using a UI framework.
I've started some, but working with UI frameworks sucks. I can't imagine starting with one for my first application.
I've done web UIs for years, and they aren't *easy* but they're way easier than working with modern UI frameworks.
Which, I guess, is why Electron is so popular.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:25:37 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) In the 80s, my aunt (a child) and my grandmother (someone who, today, can't even effectively operate her Television) wrote a series of computer programs from which they ran my grandfather's business.
They generated invoices and printed them, scheduled jobs, kept a list of customers, etc.
They did it all with an Atari 8-bit computer, and the included BASIC.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:21:47 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) Today, I know a lot of business people who do the kinds of things I would write software for using Excel or Access and macros.
But it's mostly boring business stuff.
My mom used to weave batch files and sidekick databases in to something resembling a computer program.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:21:47 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) I used to go off about hypercard a lot.
It was a tool, scarcely more complicated than Powerpoint, that enabled anyone who chose to to make programs that do things.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:20:28 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) It is absurd that there are not simpler ways for non-programmers to make computers do what they want.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Apr-2022 13:43:51 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) There were a few years when I was a kid in which my family was actually pretty well off, but that was the exception, rather than the rule.
After my little brother was born, money was tight. After my parents split, it got tighter.
My Grandmother worked at Walmart, and had previously done a lot of work with small kids. As a result, we had lots of Boxes. She'd bring home boxes that had held cheese (perfect size for Atari 2600 cartridge storage) and boxes that had held all manner of other things.
These were normally thick chip board, or otherwise not corrugated. The ones that were interior boxes from inside other packaging would also frequently be devoid of printing of any kind.
Do you understand what this meant?
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Apr-2022 13:43:50 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) Cities.
It meant cities.
I turned these boxes in to buildings and scattered them throughout her house.
I made roads and ramps and elevated crossings and just Covered the world.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Apr-2022 05:35:27 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) But yeah, He-Man.
The New Adventures of He-Man
Look at this obviously not he-man imposter.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Apr-2022 05:35:24 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) And I was always the kind of kid that went for a big multipack of cheap crappy toys, you know?
Like, I never owned any 3 3/4 GI Joes, or if I did I got them second hand, but I'd get the Lanard Corps. Space Crew mutlipacks from Walmart once every few months. For the same price as one Licensed action figure, I'd get like 15 generic space guys and stage massive battles that spanned an entire house.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Apr-2022 01:07:16 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) I've never seen an episode of Space Adventure He-Man, I don't even remember what it was called, but I had a bunch of toys from it when I was a kid that I'd scrounged up at yard sales and the like.
I had a lot of toys as a kid, but nearly all of them came from yard sales and flea markets. I was always a few years behind, and never really knew where the toys came from.
I just got the stuff that looked cool, you know?
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Apr-2022 01:07:16 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) You remember when they rebooted he-man, the first time, back in the late 80s, and transposed it in to a Space Adventure series?
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 17:27:37 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) The reason for this, of course, is as Pickety says "R>G"
Returns on Capital are greater than Economic Growth. Having money makes money faster than making money.
Marx looked at the same trends and called it the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to fall.
We're about to find out what happens when that inverts. Returns on Capital are slowing, and either economic activity will stop as a result, and people will starve, or people will fight.
It's going to be an interesting few years.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 14:54:05 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) No company should be inescapably large.
Build a small thing that works and pays it's workers well and can survive forever.
Scale linearly, if at all.
Anything else is garbage.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 14:52:30 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) A small thing that exists and sustains and pays it's workers a living wage but doesn't look to expand and consume and control the world is somehow Bad.
Fuck that.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 14:52:29 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) I'm watching this Silicon Valley show on HBO, and I keep getting slapped in the face by this idea that, if you're not operating at scale you might as well not bother.
These companies aren't bootstrapping themselves, they're taking $100M checks at $5B valuations.
No company is worth $5B unless it is inescapably large.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 14:52:22 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) I've been thinking about The Internet and The Economy over the last 50 years and I keep coming up against this idea that makes me want to scream.
Our entire economic system is built around this idea that a small, sustainable, profitable business is worthless, and that only a MASSIVE INTERDEPENDENT BEHEMOTH that grows larger with each passing quarter is acceptable.
Netflix can't ever lose any customers, ever, because they are operating at a scale where their debts are ridiculously high, and the only thing keeping them afloat is the fact that they show Growth quarter over quarter over quarter.
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Andrew (R.S Admin) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 01:16:21 UTC Andrew (R.S Admin) Seems like it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility to do some kind of Activity Pub enabled store front?
Build some Activity Pub functionality in to a platform like WooCommerce.
All transactions would happen on the sellers personal sites. The federation functionality would be for discoverability, cross promotion, etc.