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  • allisonaparrish@friend.camp
    Nov 10, 2026, 7:00 PM

    here's a take that'll please no one: the belief that computers are difficult to use—especially foss and tools related to programming—is mostly constructed by politics and marketing, not by any inherent characteristics of the software. reasoning: (a) people master very complicated and user-hostile processes *all the time*. knitting, driving a car on the interstate, playing a musical instrument, being a baseball fan, using the subway—all just as complicated imo as (e.g.) learning the command line

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  • allisonaparrish@friend.camp
    Nov 10, 2026, 7:05 PM

    (b) this is totally anecdotal, but as someone who has been teaching computer programming to adults for ~20yrs or so, the biggest obstacle that students face is not that the material is difficult (even when it *is* difficult), but that students are *culturally predisposed to a belief that they're not smart enough to program*, which acts as a permission structure for giving up. (this is peculiar, because no one having trouble in a knitting class thinks "i guess i'm not smart enough to knit")

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  • allisonaparrish@friend.camp
    Nov 10, 2026, 7:09 PM

    (c) programmers are predisposed to convincing others that programming is too complicated for "normal people" as a means of job security and achieving social status; computer manufacturers and their software-making friends are predisposed to a marketing message that states: computers are too difficult for normal people, so buy this new machine/software, which is finally the computer/software that normal people can use! together both sides form a kind of mutual ratchet imo

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  • allisonaparrish@friend.camp
    Nov 10, 2026, 7:11 PM

    (the trope of the "computer nerd" in media is such an effective embodiment of both sides of this rhetoric that its prevalence almost seems like a conspiracy imo)

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  • allisonaparrish@friend.camp
    Nov 10, 2026, 7:16 PM

    anyway, whenever someone says something like "LLMs have finally made programming accessible to normal people!" I try to remember that the Silicon And Fossil Fuel Pyramid Scheme Industry has spent literally hundreds billions of dollars in an effort to convince you that computers were *already difficult to use* (a grift that computer programmers are largely in on!) and to politicize LLMs as being "easy to use" in contrast

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