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Comment by butterfi | Hacker News Reader

"Perhaps the iPad signals an end to the hacker era of digital history"

Perhaps the microwave signals an end to the chef era of cooking history.

In a very real way, it did. Fifty or sixty years ago, people prepared food largely from scratch. Now, a large proportion of the population of Western nations prepares food by poking a hole in the plastic cover, closing the door, and hitting "Express".

Similarly, one possible future prompted by the iPad is one where "chefs" (hackers) do food preparation, but most people hit the power button.

Al3x is asserting that this is bad because there's not really much of a path from 'here' to 'there'. You can't get started by running scripts in a shell, or writing AppleScript, or whatever — you get apps from the App Store and that's it.

True -- most people weren't interested in cooking as an exercise, they just wanted to eat. However, interest in cooking as an art form, not just as consumption, is at an all time high (or so it seems to me from the countless media around food). So, did the microwave kill the culinary arts? No, it liberated the people who didn't care cooking from having to deal with it.

As someone who avoids processed food, I get where you're coming from, but our values are not necessarily other peoples values.

The microwave let people who didn't want to spend their time cooking do more interesting things. Is their life worse for the wear? Only because food prepared as a frozen dinner is inferior to food prepared by hand. The same is exactly the opposite of software. Software prepared by a professional is almost always of superior quality to a script that Bob wrote in his spare time. Maybe not if Bob is actually very good a programming, which leads into...

This is patently false. The iPad is not a primary computing device, and will not replace a laptop or desktop, which by (current) definition is open to these things. Apple is not holding back the iPad-hosted compiler and shell. There is no iPad-hosted compiler or shell. Additionally, the development environment which does get you from 'here' to 'there' is openly (but not freely) available. You can write and run any application you choose, the same way that Apple does, via the Developer Program.

> You can't get started by running scripts in a shell, or writing AppleScript, or whatever — you get apps from the App Store and that's it.

What if you get started by writing HTML and Javascript code into a nice online editor - something like Bespin, or like those many different sites where you can code in all sorts of languages using a web-based front-end - and you get to publish your results to a web page and see the results immediately?

Does it get any easier than that?

Code - publish - save to home screen - "hey dad, check out this application I just made!"

My comment elsewhere: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084669

Agreed - maybe even adding to your homescreen as a javascript bookmarklet so it's available offline.

Anyway, yes maybe the iPad wont inspire the next engineers, maybe it will inspire the next authors/bloggers/photographers/web developers/content creators.

I think the iPad does its best to _not_ inspire creators of any type. It's a device focused almost entirely on content consumption.

For a few years there Apple put much of their effort into creating tools that gave more people access to the means of content production.

Now that they own major channels of media distribution (more all the time with the introduction of "xyz store"), their effort is focused on promoting content consumption much more than content production.

It's a device focused almost entirely on content consumption.

So is a book.

and television... and movie projectors...

It is true that around the time the microwave started becoming a popular way of preparing your food there was a sharp decline in the number of people making their dinner from scratch. However, this decline of "chef culture" was accompanied with much larger political and social change, most notably the feminist movement. It used to be the woman's job to slave over a meal for the family every day, but as women started seeking equal rights, the microwave and TV dinners became an engine for emancipation, a way for women to maintain their household fed while cutting down on housework.

My point being, while technology can enable and accelerate social and cultural changes, it usually is not enough. Usually there must also be a "real" movement where that technology fits. I think this applies to the iPad.

Some of those apps might be LOGO or SCRATCH simulators.

Not with the current App Store policies they won't be.

The people I personally know use microwaves either for heating water or melting cheese or warming up meals from the day before. But then, if that's all people need, then maybe the iPad really is the right tool for them.

I think by "Western nations" you mean North American nations. Even in the UK (probably the most "US-ized" country in Europe" make-from-scratch food is common.

In much of Europe you will find that instant foods make up only a slightly larger part of a grocery than make-from-scratch does in the US. Very minimal.

I'm English. (On the Internet, nobody knows you're not a yank.) Microwave food was very common for me growing up.

Someone has to write those apps.

but not with the iPad.

I'll link to my comment in another thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084790

Summary: You also can't get started being a surgeon by taking your pets apart and putting them back together, but people still go through years of medical school and become surgeons.

I believe that this is precisely the fear. I don't think anyone is enamored with the beleaguered process in becoming a doctor, and would not like "hacking" to turn into some long process requiring official education or a lot of personal determination. Today you can "fall into" becoming a programmer. In fact, many of the best programmers I know started in completely different professions, they didn't make a decision early on that writing software is what they wanted to do.

I am simply explaining the OPs fears. There exists an argument that the iPad could theoretically inspire more people to learn because its more "fun".

That might be my favorite iPad analogy yet.

Will people please stop calling this the end of computing? If not for me, do it for CoCo [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/23/44346/3789]

If you write software for a living you have to write for whichever platform the market dictates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com