Login
You're viewing the front-end.social public feed.
  • taylor :blobfoxmlem:tay@tech.lgbt
    May 16, 2026, 3:11 AM

    i think the thing im realising about technology is that the thing i care about more than anything else is:

    i want to be able to hack (as in easily tinker, bodge, customise, not bypass security) on my own computer.

    programs used to have plugin & scripting functionality, macOS still has AppleScript, but more apps are dropping support or never had support in the first place

    programming languages become more strict & built for massive programs where stability is required. Objective-C was massively dynamic and let you 'swizzle' things but it's replaced with languages like Swift where runtime patching becomes impossible, and WinForms or Storyboards get depreciated because there are Better™ options. I don't want better. I want 'just stick a few text fields & buttons on a window' and be done with it in 5 minutes.

    and no, being open source DOES NOT account for this. (an often times makes the situation worse)

    💬 1🔄 8⭐ 23

Replies

  • taylor :blobfoxmlem:tay@tech.lgbt
    May 16, 2026, 3:15 AM

    the only platform where i can see this living on is the web - probably a large part of why I like it so much even though people keep telling me to use the right tool for the job instead of writing everything as a web app.

    writing websites is easy. you just open a html file in a text editor.

    modifying existing websites is easier. you don't need to pull up ghidra & learn assembly. you don't need to fire up an IDE. you just hit F12 and start typing into the JS console, or even better, install ublock and right click > 'block element'

    few days ago i wanted to delete everything from a Google Photos account. There is no easy way to do this, as there is no 'select all' button but because it's a website, I can write a script in the JS console that finds all unchecked checkboxes and checks them.

    if this was a native app i would have been fucked.

    💬 0🔄 5⭐ 14