@landley *nodds in agreement*

I guess #Python tries to be the modern #BASIC and the #RaspberryPi #Pi400 tries to be the modern #ZXspectrum but even then the comparison falls flat because outside of #Linux distros, most OSes don't come with a preinstalled Python interpreter - espechally not #macOS & #Windows, so we don't get that cohesion.

#JavaScript and #WebDevelopment - espechally on the #FrontEnd - kinda went overly complex, thus #JS failed to become a mass-adopted languague outside of bloated "#WebApps" that literally ship a whole #Chromium (like #nwjs / https://nwjs.io ) and turn something that should've been measured in Kilobytes if maybe a few Megabytes into hundreds of Megabytes if not Gigabytes of #bloat to be shoved onto a device…

And whilst one can shim that down significantly by relying on #WebView as #API...
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.monocles.browser/

...This comes with the can of worms that is #Android #Updates and #Security Patches for devices...
https://docs.monocles.eu/browser.app/#security_issues

...which have an absurdly short lifecycle (usually less than 2 years, #Fairphone being one of the few exception!) given flagship smartphones being solid in the 4-digit territory, when equally or cheaper priced business laptops get 3 - 5+ support...

The abundance of computing resources like bandwith, storage, RAM and CPU sadly have resulted in increased #Enshittification, where things feel slower and less responsive than previous versions in spite of sometimes exponentially more resources at hand.

In many cases a lot if developments feel like regressions in terms of UI, UX and overall efficiency, and we see the digital equivalent of #SuperUselessVehicles being made...

That's not the fault of JS - a language isn't a sentient being nor being responsible for even existing - but ut's like introducing alcohol to someone who had never drank anything by giving them a double shot of Absynthé: It ruins it for them...

@OS1337 Python sheds its user base every few years like a snake shedding its skin. (Python 3.6 is too old to build QEMU.)

The advantage of JavaScript was it's built into every web browser, and web browsers were everyone's window onto the world back before phone apps.

8-bit programming was like haiku, every letter counts and the constraints were where the creativity arose from.

We still teach kids the alphabet, then words, then sentences, but we don't teach 8-bit programming, then 16/32/64.

@landley Sadly we don't teach kids anything in that matter (at least in #Germany from my observation)...

I literally met a highschool graduate in 2019 starting and apprenticeship in an administration / accounting role and they literally confessed to me that they didn't know how to use a Computer at all.

And I'm not talking "How to use Linux/macOS/Windows?" but like "How to turn it on/off?" "How to use a Keyboard and Mouse?" and "How to login?"...

I wounder how this person even got their university eligibility without having ever touched any computer at all.

And that's the state of #Education: People get groomed into being #Users and #TechIlliterates!

@OS1337 College taught me Pascal instead of C. When I was teaching community college they taught Java instead of C. I'm told if you really insist, these days they'll teach you C++ instead of C.

C++ developers foam at the mouth when you call C a portable assembly language, because it's an advantage of C that C++ will never have. They insist it can't possibly be so, and use the optimizer to introduce undefined behavior to retroactively justify their position.

C++ keeps trying to add simplicity.

@landley I mean, C is being used instead if C++ in many cases because predictability is often more useful than object orientation.

But to go back at "universal languague to get shit done with" I think #bash is the closest to a modern-day #BASIC, with #fish basically trying to take that idea and make it more user-friendly at the cost of simplicity under the hood.

But #C is the standard I got confronted with at University, because at the code level it is portable and it doesn't care if you target i386, arm64 or 128bit RISC-V:
It's the compiler's task to turn a hello world into a native executeable for those...

@OS1337 @landley Hi! C is neat, of course. It is the first programming language I learned!

But... How are you going to manage exceptions? It's a killer feature from C++ !!

@DavittoKun @landley so what?

#Compression is also a cheap trick to make a #toybox + #musl / #Linux fit onto a 1440kB 3,5" FDD...

IT WORKS!

@DavittoKun @landley It's certainly not yet where I want it to be, but it's going in the right direction...

Progress is slow since it's a 2 person team doing it on free time with no budget and OFC it's still crammed space...

But feedback and contributions are welcome!

https://github.com/OS-1337/OS1337...

@DavittoKun @landley One of many goals...

The core goal is to build a clean slate of a minimalist Linux that can then be used as basis for a lot of projects.

Because whilst things could be done with a @Raspberry_Pi & #RaspberryPiOS, having to ship over a quarter gigabyte of a minimalist Debian feels excessive.

Also it's about having some good replacement for #tmsrtbt that isn't just a #TechDemo like #Floppinux, which @w84death did and evidenced that it's perfectly possible to do so...

@OS1337 @landley @Raspberry_Pi@raspberrypi.social Yes, the OS in RPi is too heavy. But, you know... Not even 1TB MicroSD cards are that expensive these days (RetroPIE...)

However, it would serve the community right by getting a clean, optimized system.

@DavittoKun @OS1337 @Raspberry_Pi Where do you get reliable 1TB cards? Biggest I've seen around here is 256G, and I'm reluctant to order random chinese product du jour these days because so many of them are scams now...

(I miss akihabara...)

@DavittoKun @OS1337 @Raspberry_Pi P.S. My motivation here is severalfold.

I also want to make Android self-hosting: https://landley.net/toybox/

And countering "trusting trust" with a base system small/simple enough to binary audit, then build everything under: http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2020-July/011898.html

But more than that, I want something students can understand. Read your whole _real_ OS cover-to-cover, no black boxes, then run it in production by adding but not replacing stuff.