On the one hand, I thought the same. On the other, this is area is a minefield of proprietary non standards and walled off chips and protocols. Embedded is bad, communication even worse. Having an open source phonecall is a real achievement and a testament to the endurance of the people working on it.

Its impressive and not at all, at the same time.

Yes, and that’s a large accomplishment given the important constraints that were placed upon this project.

~12 years ago Android and iOS were at the bare minimum to be considered a phone by making a call and having the basic necessity apps.

It takes time to build something from scratch. Especially the way Purism is building it without proprietary hardware and firmware blobs.

Maybe we should discourage everyone from learning programming when they first print "Hello World"?

You are right! Most other phones do so much more, like sending all your data to a big corporation with almost no need for you to worry about it. I'm writing this from my Android phone and hope Google isn't going to be angry with me.