> Most people are dumb, non-thinking consumers of output.
That's by design, not nature.
> Most people don't want to have to open their washing machine and tweak the wires. Most people don't want their fridge to be able to do anything other than being a fridge.
The right comparison isn't the fridge, but Keurig. Imagine a fridge that only accepted a particular brand of packaged meals, and nothing else. Storing leftovers? Forget it. Random food bought at the supermarket? Need to root your fridge first. Medicine? Only if you buy an add-on. That's how modern computing looks like, particularly on mobile.
The elitist mentality is the one that insists things have to be this way - that you have to have a hard split between producers and consumers, developers and users. The old-era computing philosophy GP refers to didn't have a hard split here - it enabled one to progress all the way from a novice to a programmer, and also allowed them to stop at the point they're comfortable with.
There are more then million dishes available in my Fridge market, and I can safely buy/eat any of them without a practical fear of viruses and I don't care if the dish is prepared in India or Indiana. Food is always fresh.
In olden days I could have bought food from anywhere but that came with a burden of choice, I had to look for credibility of the vendor, confusing packaging, allergy info. was missing/wrong and there was always a risk of virus. Once a virus caused global outages and pandemic.
That's by design, not nature.
> Most people don't want to have to open their washing machine and tweak the wires. Most people don't want their fridge to be able to do anything other than being a fridge.
The right comparison isn't the fridge, but Keurig. Imagine a fridge that only accepted a particular brand of packaged meals, and nothing else. Storing leftovers? Forget it. Random food bought at the supermarket? Need to root your fridge first. Medicine? Only if you buy an add-on. That's how modern computing looks like, particularly on mobile.
The elitist mentality is the one that insists things have to be this way - that you have to have a hard split between producers and consumers, developers and users. The old-era computing philosophy GP refers to didn't have a hard split here - it enabled one to progress all the way from a novice to a programmer, and also allowed them to stop at the point they're comfortable with.