I Started Programming When I Was 7. I’m 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed | James Randall
“But at the same time I’m looking at the landscape, trying to figure out what building means to me now.”
Building used to mean something because there was something worth building.
It doesn’t mean much today because there’s nothing much to build. Tools are almost irrelevant, here.
There’s nothing to build anymore. Another chat app? Social media? Word processing software? Microsoft Office is everywhere and most people use less than 5% of its features. Office came out 35 years ago.
Games used to be an area to build lots of things in! Done by 2000s-2010s. Folks can play the same game for a decade without feeling bored (Counter-Strike, FortNite, WoW). Programmers are maintaining games for years without adding much to it. It just works, these days.
There’s nothing much to build anymore. There are things to improve upon and update, sure (my personal one: a good ass RSS reader with a two-pane view instead of that ridiculous three-pane BS). But true building from the ground up? That’s over. The needs are not there. The capital needed is super high (if not for dev, for marketing). The machines are locked more and more. Those things prevent any kind of interesting software development.
It is a bit sad. It is also progress. Toying around with IRQs and DMAs was fun, but it also was not that fun. It was satisfying to install a sound card and a CD-ROM flawlessly, with nice ribbon cable management and plastic smell heating up after pressing the power button, but I’m happy just plugging in a USB-A cable and be done with a device today.
The magic, that magic is gone. Sort of: we can still summon it by encouraging people to use older computers and systems!