This post has had a while in the making. At present it is still an assortment of points with no obvious coherence, but at some point I have to pin it down.
I think my biggest issue with computers is... the web browser. There is so much about the web that I dislike, it seems like it systematically hurts my aesthetic sense. Here is one such example, where it just likes to ruin the party for everybody: I like the plan9 system, it's unix cleaned and rebooted. But when discussing operating systems mostly nobody uses it, because it "lacks a modern web browser"; I'm not kidding, this is a common complain about non-mainstream operating systems. Don't get me wrong, HTML is fine, even css I think is nice. The problem starts with ECMAscript, and the horrendous ecosystem that has developed around it. Anyway, there exists this misconception that an operating system is only as useful as it's ability to port this oversized voracious inutility, which is what I would like to challenge. People still confuse the web with the internet, especially on the web. I have set up my box so it doesn't run any of that crap, and I can be fully functional. I must admit of cheating by having an android tablet by myside with a full web browser, and use it heavily for reference, but even that I am migrating away from. I could use links/lynx for all my html needs , and I plan to do just that at some point. Hopefully, I won't ever have to look at a cloudflare screen again, or recaptcha. As of now, I just get one for porn and piracy, the only two things the modern web is good for anyway. Kind of makes you think how these guys make a living. But I digress. What was I saying?
It hasn't been all that bad, in fact, it' been great, I have managed to actually _do stuff_ on my computer, actual real doing and tinkering and learning! Maybe I'm just getting old.
I think most interesting is my present use of the web, I use it mostly for documentation I could download or scrap online. For some reason, I would rather read a man page on the screen than on a virtual terminal. It takes time getting used to for some things. I still sometimes visit some of the "shallower" waters of the internet I am fond of, and even those are considered fringe by some standards, but as I approach the general culture that resides there, I see a constant complain about the doom of the internet, and I realize both how bad things are seemingly for most people, and how web-centered webizens are. There is constant bitching that nothing is good anymore and it all is ruined forever for everyone, that there's nothing worthwhile ever again and so on and so forth and on and on. And I just have to look elsewhere and there is plenty of engaging discussion but the same voice that complains (a voice of an anonymous amorphous mass) that a board or community is "too slow" because it gets a handful of posts *every day*. And oh well I'm not going to hold their hands, one needs to find, indeed one does find, what one is looking for. technomancy 101.
Changing the topic, I like the color white. I am tired of black screens, and dark screens. I like light-colored palette, and gradients of gray to mitigate the glare. I feel I can work better that way.
También estuve pensando en el valor de los pequeños proyectos. Mi preferencia tiende hacia proyectos menores, no a lo más dominante. No lo se, es mi personalidad. Así, no uso Ubuntu sino crux, y usaría sourcemage si no tuviera que compilar todo el toolchain, y ya he mencionado a plan9. No uso vim ni neovim, sino nvi y vis. Emacs es muy conveniente, pero me interesan más Edwin y Hemlock. Mis lenguajes son lisp y forth, me llaman APL y tcl, en fin, se entiende. Todo lo que he dicho más arriba aplica en este tema. No me gusta la complejidad, y prefiero siempre las ideas alternativas a las establecidas, pienso que los monstruos pierden la capacidad de adaptación, se osifican. Creo que en el constante intercambio y recombinación se crea el terreno fértil para la resurgencia de nuevos paradigmas. Personalmente creo que no estamos muy lejos de una especie de "renacimiento" del internet. Así, si escribo un editor estructural de código en Scheme, no será para que otros lo *usen* tanto como para que pueda resultar a alguien útil en la creación de su propio sistema. No tengo como meta crear algo popular que luego tenga que mantener.
Programar una computadora, en principio, se trata de poder hacer lo que uno quiera con ella. Estos días, se trata de tener todo hecho para uno de antemano, o al instante. El programador ha cedido su poder, para recuperarlo debe conjurar, antes que nada, su propio editor, sus propias utilidades, sus herramientas.
No se cómo acabar esta breve diatriba. Diría que, a pesar de estar sometidos a viejos paradigmas, también tenemos las herramientas para crear un mundo nuevo, o, cuando menos, uno un poco mejor para nosotros como para los que nos sucedan. Jamás, ni aún bajo los modelos teóricos más pulidos, será la utopía que gustamos de imaginar, eso queda fuera de toda duda. Pero podemos manifestar nuestra voluntad , y ejecutarla en forma de procesos!
Up next: executable classical chinese, the netizen language, imps and AI.