Was going to edit this in but it quickly turned into a related rant about the state of things: if you don't want that, scroll past.
The real problem is that there's no more room for the technological "middle class". We've gotten to the point where you cannot be SLIGHTLY interested in computers, want to make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world. You either have to have no interest at all (and live in blissful ignorance) or be so into this type of stuff that you might as well just make it a career. In between these two extremes lies a valley of frustration and needless complexity, where everything is always breaking and changing because we found out what was used 2 years ago is actually bad but THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT! because now we found a solution that is totally going to work forever this time. It's exhausting to even think about.
Many people got their start programming with something like messing with simple Visual Basic stuff. I, and I'm sure many others who are reading this, started with a TI-83 and a desire to cheat on my math quiz. I know that I'm going a little off the rails here, and this has become more of a rant than anything meaningful, but I really, really hate how there's quickly becoming no space for that sort of thing - nowhere for people formerly uninterested in technology and programming to get their feet wet, nowhere to make a quick application to accomplish a small task, etc..
The real problem is that there's no more room for the technological "middle class". We've gotten to the point where you cannot be SLIGHTLY interested in computers, want to make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world. You either have to have no interest at all (and live in blissful ignorance) or be so into this type of stuff that you might as well just make it a career. In between these two extremes lies a valley of frustration and needless complexity, where everything is always breaking and changing because we found out what was used 2 years ago is actually bad but THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT! because now we found a solution that is totally going to work forever this time. It's exhausting to even think about.
Many people got their start programming with something like messing with simple Visual Basic stuff. I, and I'm sure many others who are reading this, started with a TI-83 and a desire to cheat on my math quiz. I know that I'm going a little off the rails here, and this has become more of a rant than anything meaningful, but I really, really hate how there's quickly becoming no space for that sort of thing - nowhere for people formerly uninterested in technology and programming to get their feet wet, nowhere to make a quick application to accomplish a small task, etc..