(end middle-age geezer historical section) From punching out Algol programs on cards in college, to writing Basic on my first PC years later (no better language was available without shelling out a lot of cash), to writing my own C++ MineSweeper and chess programs for BeOS, to my current hobby-level hacking in KDevelop on Debian/Sid, to me computing has always been about _programming_. Maybe it is just that PCs didn’t exist when I was younger (for reference, I graduated high school in 1979, the IBM PC and original Mac came out when I was in college), but I have always thought about computers solidly in the context of programming. ![]() People seem to be getting away from the definition of “computer” as “something that can be programmed”, and are being led to think in terms of it being hardware that “plays” software like a CD player plays a CD. (enter “when I was a kid I walked five miles to school uphill both ways section”) MS did not invent the idea of proprietary software, but more than anyone else, they have pushed the idea that computer owners are only “end-users” and that we do not own the software we have bought. This is not off-topic on a story about “Longhorn”, because the issue is whether Microsoft will maintain dominance via their desktop near-monopoly, or whether they will become just another software company. I don’t know about the thoughts of the poster to whom you replied, but I can tell you my own about Linux/GNU-Linux/Free Software/OSS or whatever you want to call it. ![]() What matters is that their junior high buddies told them that Microsoft is evil and that you’re really cool if you install Mandrake.’ “Because it doesn’t matter to the slashdork group-think crowd how good Microsoft technology is.
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