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I think motif was fine for its time, but definitely not much better than OpenLook.

However, 30 years ago, developing a standard SunOS app with devGuide was the most enjoyable and productive programming I've ever experienced. Simply layout your GUI, link actions to methods, generate code, fill in the abstracted methods, compile and run. I didn't have to learn X or any other bloated low level graphics library.

AFAIK, nothing has been easier, especially XCode.

I'm reading Iain McGhilchrist's The Master and his Emissary. There's a bit about right brain damage correlating (fact?) to lacking empathy.

    Patients with right frontal deficits, but not left frontal deficits, suffer a change of personality whereby they become incapable of empathy.

Besides API features, it won't require downloading 0.5 GB of web browser in order to run.

Sure, you can make it smaller, but how many companies actually do this?

Sure, you can make it faster, but how many companies actually do this? Accountants and product managers don't care about speed or size -- that's a user problem.

Judging by the app sizes I download (and try to avoid), few companies really care about the user experience as long as the basic feature is checked off.

I worked at a company that provided an unnecessary and heavy FE framework (original devs didn't know what they were doing and "just got it out there"). Most of the target audience used used older PCs, and thus slower and memory limited. Some pages required multiple GB of browser memory. We've had this problem for decades because devs usually have well spec'd computers.

Not upvoting because the comment is flippant, but pre-1990 you had the Cold War and a somewhat realistic threat of nuclear war, though I have no memories of ducking under my desk in 1970's NYC.

Generally, the best time to live in is the present, but there have been a lot of changes since Reagan that have made life harder and worse, e.g. the 24h news cycle exacerbated by a distinct lack of rational discourse.

The list of other factors is pretty long, but it pretty much comes down to how public and disproportionate the negativity and spin pervade society.

I'm going to use Flora Incognita if only because it's a 29MB download so even if it's offloaded, it won't kill me to retrieve it.

Seek is 220MB...

I'm sorry this blog post was so long, I didn't have time to make it shorter.

Xcancel is your friend.

Like we need another reason not to write and publish!

Not to mention that car dealerships seem to resist providing software updates. You have to beg them and even show them proof an update exists.

Technically people do benefit from having a dump or power plant.

Very few people are affected by having a dump nearby or a nuclear power plant, whereas it seems like the power generators for these AI data centers really belong in an industrial park.

These data centers also don't employ many people, though I've read they are wonderful for city taxes, assuming they haven't gotten too many enticing tax breaks.

On the website for the algebra I book:

  Grade Level US 6–8 / UK Years 7–9

"Asia 2-4" is missing.

  It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer.

It's actually an interesting question!