Could you please explain the sentiment about the desktop paradigm becoming outmoded? People seem to say this so frequently and I can't understand it at all. What about people who write code, for example? Do you expect them to be able to achieve the same standard of productivity as they currently can on <insert favorite platform here>?
Don't worry; ten years from now some people will still shout how wonderful is yet another Apple's ultimate hardware build from "miraculously excavated" Jobs' notes -- for instance an eye-track-controlled sphere covered with continuous display showing only "Give 10$ to Apple" button. While others will fork dwm to overcome recent "overly revolutional" changes which catastrophically degraded their productivity.
what? how is that the question? the argument is that the desktop paradigm is on its way out, not that the keyboard is. the goal is to have a consistent UI that can be used equally well from a touchscreen or a mouse/keyboard interface. nobody is suggesting killing the keyboard, that's retarded.
People who write code are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the overall computer-using population. That fraction will only get smaller in the years to come as mobile devices get cheaper and more capable.
Traditional desktop interfaces will survive, but they will survive in the same way that, say, Emacs survives -- as a niche product for that tiny market segment, not as the default way the Teeming Millions interact with their personal tech.
Let everybody interact in the way they want. That is freedom of choice. And the secret lies in the interfaces and protocols. I can read email in many different ways. That is the freedom the protocol gives me. It is open, well documented and wide spread.
We should strive to support open protocols instead of closed APIs which are controlled by single companies.
Then everybody can use whatever User Interface they prefer and everbody can come up with new User Interfaces any time.
The AIM/ICQ/MSN vs. XMPP world illustrates this principle. Even if someone supports the closed protocols with a multi protocol client, the support eventually gets deliberately broken by the controlling party.
Protocols are way more important than the currently popular implementation of it.
> People who write code are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the overall computer-using population. That fraction will only get smaller in the years to come as mobile devices get cheaper and more capable.
Hm, but only as long as the saturation of "computers" is increasing rapidly. If you were to focus on a developed country with good smart phone penetration, I think it's possible that the percentage of coders is increasing as old people die and young people take to new technology more readily. I guess maybe it depends on where you draw the line between power user/script kiddie/programmer.
That fraction will only get smaller in the years to come as mobile devices get cheaper and more capable.
I doubt this statement. The number of people that write code is bound to increase in the future, not become smaller. And that has (among other things) to do with mobile devices getting cheaper and more capable. And generally with further increase of automation / software complexity. And with more people that want to be producers instead of consumers in the computer age...
I'm talking about percentages. It's not that the population of programmers won't grow; it's that the population of non-programming users will grow more.
