A little bit of smuss.org

rinich:

There is a complaint running around that the iPad is a closed system, that people aren’t free to customize it, that it’s not opened up so that we can all poke around inside it. Complaints are the the iPad is killing off an idea of computing that’s open and free for all.

To which I say: Good! Does anybody remember what using a computer is like? I spent a week after reinstalling my operating system picking out the right tweaks and gizmos and gadgets to make things more manageable. Weblogs exist that do nothing but teach you how you can make your experience on a computer less shitty. On a closed system, you can’t do that. You work with what you’ve got. Even if what you have is suboptimal — and guys? We live in the future; suboptimal for us is leagues beyond what the poor savages of 2008 had — when you’re using a device, you have to use it do do something, not just to fuck around.

Some of the biggest complaints come from programmers that say the closed system means people won’t be able to satisfy their computer curiosities. To which I again say: Good! Then they’ll have to satisfy their curiosities about emotional maturity and social interaction and possibly even thinking about making the world a better place.

It is not productive to spend an hour learning how to change the font on your computer’s clock. Even if while you’re doing that you’re learning about how computers work, you’re wasting your time and getting somewhere trivial very slowly. It reminds me of those copies of Shakespeare schools give children with all the annotations defining words and metaphors and techniques, so that kids can appreciate Shakespeare. It doesn’t work. It just makes Shakespeare look like a cryptogram that you can’t read like you do a normal play. Opening up a system that wasn’t meant to be opened just makes little kids cry.

The standard response, when I sink so low as to let programmers communicate with me, is: “But Rory, programming is my passion. I was willing to spend that long learning how to code.” No, I think back at them — programmers are not given the satisfaction of hearing my voice. No, you were willing to spend that long because you had obsessive-compulsive problems mixed with an antisocial attitude.

Writing is a passion of mine; one summer, I was allowed to attend a special program consisting of the best young writers in my state. The twelve of us were relatively brilliant; we likely spent six of the eight working hours we had every day looking at Youtube videos and talking on Facebook. Being passionate about something means that when you do it, you don’t fuck around, but that doesn’t instantly give you a right to ignore every part of life you’re woeful at. If you’re wasting your life doing stupid things and calling it your passion, you are no better than the people who spend a hundred hours a week watching football reruns, no matter how you try and justify yourself.

This system is closed! No tinkering! You can browse the Internet, or check your mail, or take notes, or listen to music, but when you’re out of little buttons to press then you’re out of things to do. Discover something else. You are not allowed to delve into the things that nobody ought to care about. You’re forced to get another button, or to put down your pad and make out with the other people wandering, dazed, unsure of what to do.

But however will children learn how to program? Simple: We will make them applications that teach them how to program. Every kid wants to make video games and Google, so it’s not like having a closed system will make them forget that such things are possible. When they go to learn, however, they will not learn by wasting their time doing things that will never make them happy in life. Instead, they will go to the carefully-screened App Store, and they will search for “How do I make video games”, and they will find a little button that teaches them and gives them a run-time environment in which to tinker. And because the iPad is so elegant and makes elegance so relatively easy, these apps will be elegant. We won’t get a row of advanced text editors too complex for people to understand. We will have a lot of simple, easy things that show us how joyful it is to tinker around, and that reveal their complexity and power as we learn enough to work at that level. I might even try my hand at something like that myself.

Sure, it’ll take a little while to get there. When the iPad comes out, it won’t instantly be capable of transforming a little kid into a little coder. But as the iPad grows, and as that beautiful, closed model wins over more and more minds, we’re certainly going to see programmers who realize they can make themselves as big a hit as any other app as long as they’re capable of being just that sexy and fun. The result will be that people like me, who never had the patience to struggle for years just to get someplace basic, will be able to finally really treat programming as the elegant art form I’ve been told by so many people that it is.

The open systems will still exist. Certainly people with certain aptitudes will always prefer something that puts the power in their hands. But they don’t have to be the default. Not when those open systems risk confusing and alienating people who just want to check their mail. We lose nothing by having closed systems. Only our chance to pontificate endlessly, to people who don’t think you’re as smart as your derogatory t-shirt claims.