[qchris]

I was discussing this with someone yesterday. A materials engineering PhD candidate, who took an engineering coding class during undergrad, but found everything so complicated that she never looked back and actually learned how to write a script. She's not alone, and it's frustrating to see the number of otherwise highly-educated people who seem handicapped in certain tasks because corporate vendors like Microsoft, Mathworks, and (maybe to a lesser degree) Apple create a situation where they're unaware that there's a free, native paradigm where writing a little bit of code isn't a pain in the butt.

I myself didn't really consider how I could use code to speed up mundane tasks until I was forced to copy files over from an embedded Linux system over bash. The introduction from "open up a terminal, and type these commands in, which does these things" to "now just put those commands in a file called script.sh and type ./script.sh, and it will do the thing automatically" was eye-opening, at 22 years old. Looking back, it's the exact same problem that resulted in a company I used to work for doing 100s of GB of data processing in Excel, because writing Excel macros was more accessible than writing a bash script to append two .csv files.

I think a lot of kids would probably really be attracted to it as well. Linux gives you control over your computing environment, in a world where children rarely have any autonomy. I don't think every one of them needs to grow up to be a professional developer, but computer literacy seems like a hugely valuable skill.

[simonh]

I never understood why Microsoft never pushed VBScript harder, and didn’t include a basic IDE for it. After all every copy of Windows for decades has come with it and it’s very powerful. They do seem to be rectifying that with PowerShell though.

I think it’s unfair hitting the Mac on this front though. Automator is an incredibly easy to use desktop automation tool, and of course you’ve got Bash, Ruby and Python right there just the same as on Linux. They have also invested heavily in work flow automation tooling for iOS.

[qchris]

For many of the smaller, just-make-it-easier tasks, I definitely agree with you regarding the greater accessibility on Mac. It's certainly not in exactly the same bucket as Windows. I think the thing I had in my head was the lack of deeper accessibility in Apple products. On Linux, there's a really neat transition that can happen, where (imho, often by accident) you switch from just being a user of your computing environment to being its owner, which I think is a gateway to higher levels of technical engagement. Apple's approach seems sort of like a high-pass filter; you can only go so far in that environment before you start running into barriers. For the general population, I agree that it's probably not a high priority, but I think the trade-off in terms of gateway potential is worth acknowledging.

[awak3ning]

I am in strong agreement with this. I feel like it is selling kids short to not give them exposure to the Linux environment that underlies our modern world.

To me, it really comes down to empowerment of others. If you are not taught how the world works from first principles (in this case the world of computing), then you are forever relegated to live in someone else's world and live within their paradigm of thinking. In this case, the only justification is market capture for these Enterprises, which hasn't materially advanced society and societal issues as far as I can tell.

[kitsunesoba]

> I myself didn't really consider how I could use code to speed up mundane tasks until I was forced to copy files over from an embedded Linux system over bash. The introduction from "open up a terminal, and type these commands in, which does these things" to "now just put those commands in a file called script.sh and type ./script.sh, and it will do the thing automatically" was eye-opening, at 22 years old. Looking back, it's the exact same problem that resulted in a company I used to work for doing 100s of GB of data processing in Excel, because writing Excel macros was more accessible than writing a bash script to append two .csv files.

I mean, Linux specifically isn't really necessary for this. Back in the early-mid 00s, OS X got me into terminal usage and "real" programming via its free (as in beer), full-octane bundled dev tools and included Ruby installation.

In fact, at the point that I got into these things with OS X, I had already tinkered with a Linux variant (Yellow Dog) and had given up before getting too far because I didn't have the knowhow to make the OS as a whole work properly, and worse, the internet resources needed to fill this knowledge gap didn't make themselves obvious.

[qchris]

I can agree with this, which is why I added the "(to a lesser degree) Apple" caveat. I think, especially now, it seems they're moving in a less hacker-friendly direction in terms ability to progress from write-a-script to build-you-own-environment, but certainly is better than Windows. I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.

[kitsunesoba]

> I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.

Yeah, this was over 15 years ago. Yellow Dog was basically Red Hat PowerPC edition, so imagine Red Hat circa 2002.

Things have certainly gotten easier since then though, no question.