[Dalewyn]

I don't care if the code is closed or open, because I use computers to do things. Computers are tools to let me achieve things, thusly I care about the results and not about the process (eg: closed vs. open).

I don't care to computer either, because that's not what I consider computers to be at my point in life. I use tools, not tool tools.

[the_third_wave]

> Computers are tools to let me achieve things

Computers are tools to run software. Software is what makes (or breaks) the computer a useful tool. A computer without software is just as useful as a lump of pig iron: handy as a paper weight but no more.

Closed software which locks your data in its grasp may be OK for some purposes but in the long run it nearly always ends up causing problems - try opening an older Word file in current Word [1] for an example of such.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38906331

[thimp]

This is a terrible straw man.

Firstly I have raised two bugs against LibreOffice in the last decade where it can't open files it created and can't print a spreadsheet.

Secondly the specifications for proprietary software are not necessarily closed: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_form...

The only thing here is that crap software is crap software. And Word is crap software.

[asadotzler]

Tool users with any sophistication almost always need to make modifications or repairs to their tools. Buying tools that make that impossible seems foolhardy to me. That you don't see things this way is interesting to me. Some people are happy eating the slop that's served to them with no interest in even seasoning it themselves. Strange to me, but to each his own.

[Dalewyn]

Linux and FOSS alternatives require me to spend more time fixing and managing them rather than using them. That is unacceptable to me; computers are tools, if I can't use the tools when I need or want them they have fundamentally failed their purpose.

I'm an adult with duties and responsibilities and limited time now, not a naive teenager with too much time, too little money, and a bad case of acne. I simply do not have the time, energy, nor will anymore.

Note: Also, I'm cursed. I've killed more Linux installs (barring Android) than I can bother to count at this point, for something as bluntly mundane as updating them. I cannot rely on Linux (again barring Android).

[asadotzler]

Yeah. The HN audience has really changed over the last 15 years or so. It used to be for hackers but now it's apparently not.

[nonrandomstring]

I use computers to "do things" sounds a lot like Homer Simpson..."Marge, I'm just going out now to commit certain deeds."

[Dalewyn]

Do I really need to spell out the fact that computers are a means to an end? Not the end to a means?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given the HN audience, but come on. Ordinary people use computers because they need or want to do something, and a computer will help them do it.

[eimrine]

Computers are not a means to an end any more. Computers are the end to a means since the ordinary user has no more choice not to use a computer at all. Ordinary people in 2020's use computers because a computer is the God, not because the man wants to run some program on it.

[nonrandomstring]

> Ordinary people in 2020's use computers because a computer is the > God, not because the man wants to run some program on it.

Good point. Is something a tool still if the user has no choice but to use it?

Certainly it is no longer "an extension of the mind-body and will" as some philosophers define "tool".

Is it a crutch? And does that imply that we have become "disabled" or are now "differently abled but dependent"?

I think the GP's appeal to simple dignity of labour and clear purpose troubles me for other reasons though.

All tools shape their users, and none more-so than a computer. So much indeed that I think it deserves a different status. It's a different quality of tool than a hammer. Today, it very much uses you in equal measure to you using it.

Calling computers (mere) tools seems a little dismissive.

And in that regard I think the GP shows a typical nonchalance around what they _think_ is their (very mysterious and serious) "doings".

When a system already defines all the possibilities for what you can make and do, and these days it even curates, censors, "corrects" and extrapolates for you... what is left of that glorious will to action (doing)?

Has it been magnified such that it's "AIA" = AI aligns with IA (artificial intelligence is aligned with intelligence amplifications) and the tool is a lever (bicycle) for the mind?

Or are we cranking the handle on a auto-cookie-cutter machine that gives a choice of three shapes? That can feel a lot like "doing" stuff too.

The closer one is to that kind of "doing on rails" the more vulnerable to being replaced by a robot/algorithm.

OTOH, remembering how to see computers as engines of possibility rather than certainty again (as Ada Lovelace did), seems to me more where humans fit with computers. YMMV

[Dalewyn]

>their (very mysterious and serious) "doings".

Seeing as this needs demystifying for some bizarre reason...:

* Office work (including literally Microsoft Office documents, no substitutes acceptable).

* Occasional specialist work (CAD, Adobe Illustrator, etc.)

* Play; a man needs his vidja gaemz and some cold beer at the end of a long day.

[nonrandomstring]

Yeah sorry I didn't mean to be rude other than to josh you about mysterious "doings".

You made it sound like they were somehow special, like, I dunno, particle physics that could only run on a custom quantum computer.

Now you're specific, looks like those are all perfectly normal and ordinary things, right?

I also had to use a very specialist CAD system. In those days the only things it would run on were Sun Microsystems and HP Unix boxen.

Other than Microsoft's monopoly grip, and your need to interface with other use ^H^H^Hvictims of that monopoly, is there any reason you wouldn't try a friendlier, more socially conscious solution?

[nonrandomstring]

> fact that computers are a means to an end?

I see no fact here.

If you think about it computers have done as much to reveal and create new ends as they have to satisfy existing ones.

[eimrine]

> I use tools, not tool tools.

You remind me typical pro-Russian men who claim they are non-interesting in politics with no realizing their choice "not to be interested in politics" is a pro-war choice.