I appreciate the idea behind the post, because certainly, we need more hackable apps now that everything is becoming a SaaS that effectively cannot be archived or hacked on (unlike, say, WinAmp or major releases of Windows and their respective fan updates, or for a more common example game mods).
Unfortunately I think that while there’s a decent number of power users and people who have the aptitude to become power users who will make use of software made to be deeply customizable, they are outstripped many times over by people who don’t see software that way and have no interest in learning about it. People are quick to point fingers about why the situation is as it is, but the truth is that it was always going to be this way once computers became widely adopted. It’s no different from how most people who drive cars can’t work on them and why few feel comfortable making modifications to their houses/apartments. There’s just a hard limit to the scope and depth of the average individual's attention, and more often than not technical specialization doesn’t make the cut. No amount of gentle ramping will work around this.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build flexible software… by all means, please do, but I wouldn’t expect it to unseat the Microsofts and Googles of the world any time soon. I do however think that technically capable people should do anything they can to further the development of not just flexible, but local-first, hackable software. Anything that’s hard-tethered to a server should be out of the running entirely and something you can keep running on your machine regardless of the fate of its developer should take priority over more ephemeral options.
Pretty much everyone makes modifications to their homes— arranging furniture, choosing decorations, storing tools and implements and books and...
I've been to hotel rooms that looked identical to each other. I've never been to anybody's long-term home that wasn't unique—and unique in obvious, personalized ways. Even the most regularized housing ends up unique: I've visited everything from US dorm rooms to ex-Soviet housing blocks to cookie-cutter HOA-invested suburbs and yet, rules and norms aside, folks' private spaces were always unique, adapted through both conscious action and by unconscious day-to-day habits.
Just because 90% of these modifications did not need more DIY tools than the occasional hammer and nail does not mean they don't "count". That just shows that reducing friction, risk and skill requirements matters.
Gentle ramping helps in two ways. For people who would be inclined to get into more "advanced" modifications, it lowers the activation energy needed and makes it easier to learn the necessary skills. But even for people who would not be inclined to go "all the way", it still helps them make more involved modifications than they would otherwise. A system with natural affordances to adaptation lets people make the changes they want with less thought and attention than they would otherwise need—the design of the system itself takes on some of the cognitive load for them.
With physical objects like home furniture, the affordances stem from the physical nature of the item and the environment. With software, the affordances—or lack thereof—stem entirely from the software's design.
Mainstream software systems are clearly not designed to be adaptable, but we should not take this as a signal about human nature. Large, quasi-monopolistic companies are driven by scalability, legibility and control far more than user empowerment or adaptability. And most people get stuck with these systems less because they prefer the design and more because there are structural and legal obstacles to switching. The obstacles are surmountable—you can absolutely use a customizing Linux desktop day-to-day, I do!—but they add real friction. And, as we repeatedly see through both research and observation, friction makes a big difference to most people. Friction has an outsize impact not because of people's immutable preferences but, as you said, because people have finite pools of time and attention with too many demands to do everything.
I am making an offline-first thing that serialised to a single file that can be opened without a local Fileserver.
Still working on the UX a little but it seems close to what you want (and I agree). The vision statement is about creating immortal software exactly to fight bitrot https://github.com/tomlarkworthy/lopecode
Well with cars I think many would appreciate if they too were more malleable. My Dad has often told me of a car he once had that was really easy to repair (edit: it was a VW Beetle) as he was not known as someone who was terribly handy. Doubtful anyone would have that experience with today's cars.
> It’s no different from how most people who drive cars can’t work on them
What if instead of cars and driving, we use reading and writing as the metaphor for the kind of media/utility computing can have. I'd argue it them changes the whole nature of the argument.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree with that. Computer users are shaped by the tools that they have available to them. There is always going to be a varying of degrees on how much a user gets in customization, but when the environment is designed around customization, users end up using the tools that are given to them.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but rather suggesting that the ceiling for how much the average user can/will leverage customization is surprisingly low.
If we’re looking for levers to pull to help more people become advanced computer users, I believe progressive disclosure combined with design that takes advantage of natural human inclinations (association, spatial memory, etc) are much more powerful. Some of the most effective power users I’ve come across weren’t “tech people” but instead those who’d used iMac for 5-10 years doing photography or audio editing or whatever and had picked up all of the little productivity boosters scattered around the system ready for the user to discover at just the right time.
With that in mind, I think the biggest contributor to reduced computer literacy is actually the direction software design has taken in the past 10-15 years, where proper UI designers have been replaced with anybody who can cobble a mockup together in photoshop, resulting in vast amount of research being thrown out in favor of dribbble trends and vibes. The result is UI that isn’t humanist, doesn’t care to help the user grow, and is made only with looking pretty in slideshows and marketing copy in mind.
> I’m not disagreeing with you, but rather suggesting that the ceiling for how much the average user can/will leverage customization is surprisingly low.
The average person is also a crappy writer, bad musician and lousy carpenter. But a notepad and a pen don’t tell me how to use them. They don’t limit my creative capacity. Same story with a piano, or a hammer and chisel. I wish computers were more like that.
Your point stands. Most notebook users never use it to write a bestselling novel, or draw like Picasso. But the invitation to try is still in the medium somehow. Just waiting for the right hand.
I agree with the rest of your comment. As software engineers, we could build any software we want for ourselves. It’s telling that we choose to use tools like git and IntelliJ. Stuff that takes months or years to master. I think it’s weirdly perverted to imagine the best software for everyone else is maximally dumbed down. Thats not what users want.
Rather than aiming for “software that is easy to use” I think we should be aiming for “software that rewards you for learning”. At least, in creative work. I’m personally far more interested in making the software equivalent of piano than I am in making the software equivalent of a television set.