For me it's vision and physical ergonomics. The GUI and mouse did great things for computing, but were never strictly safe from an ergonomic standpoint, and I see a lot of people walking around with carpal tunnel braces. Especially CAD operators and computer programmers.
After trying it out roughly every year, Ubuntu finally seems to have fairly transparent touch screen support, and I've given up on Windows. At a comfortable reading distance, with the laptop actually on my lap (as I'm typing now), I can reach out and touch the screen more easily than manipulating the trackpad.
Precise cursor positioning is hit or miss, but it is with the mouse too. In either case, I usually get as close as I can, and then move the cursor with the arrow keys.
I can only do limited programming on the laptop anyway because the screen is too small. It could be that I'm a freak because I fall into the divide in between how people "should" use laptops and tablets.
I'll definitely steal the phrase (with attribution of course).
When I first started using Jupyter, I was curious about the idea of turning a notebook into a paper or book by hiding all of the code cells. In fact I learned how to do it, and have now forgotten.
More recently, I just share the notebook, code and all. I've learned that people like managers actually like it that way, because it gives them a feeling of involvement, like bringing them into the lab. You can read it, use it, change it, whatever you want.
Unfortunately, the climate doesn't like me working with the garage door up. During the winter, it's cold. During the summer, condensation pools on the cold floor.
Going further, if you're a hobbyist, you're probably instinctively prioritizing the aspects of the hobby that you enjoy. My first app was a shareware offering in the 1980s, written in Turbo Pascal, that was easy to package and only had to run on one platform. Because expectations were low, my app looked just as good as commercial apps.
Today, even the minimal steps of creating a desktop app have lost their appeal, but I like showing how I solved a problem, so my "apps" are Jupyter notebooks.
I think the problem is similar to insider sports betting, which is that once someone has made a bet, they will try to influence policy decisions in order to profit from that bet.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
Although, it would be amusing to create a sports league where the athletes are expressly permitted to wager on the outcome of their games.
I think the problem is similar to insider sports betting, which is that once someone has made a bet, they will try to influence policy decisions in order to profit from that bet.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
My mom was teaching CS in the early 80s, and subscribed to Byte. The ads were of little use for me, as I had zero money, but of course I flipped through them anyway.
I devoured Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar and I think it was one of the main influences on my career, along with Goedel, Escher, Bach.
I discovered Digi-Key in the ads. That's kind of life-changing when all you had access to was Radio Shack. You can tell someone's age from the thickness of their first Digi-Key catalog. It was like only 30 or 40 pages, mostly chips, sockets, and some wiring tools.
At the time, there were two primary alternatives for buying a computer. The first was a computer store. The second was buying an issue of Byte or a competing publication called Computer Shopper that was 100% ads. When I was in grad school, students would share a single copy of Computer Shopper and debate the best choices of parts to assemble for a new machine. Virtually all were MS-DOS based.
A fun fact is that the ability of a single transducer to function as both a speaker and a microphone is the basis for establishing an absolute measurement of sound pressure.
After trying it out roughly every year, Ubuntu finally seems to have fairly transparent touch screen support, and I've given up on Windows. At a comfortable reading distance, with the laptop actually on my lap (as I'm typing now), I can reach out and touch the screen more easily than manipulating the trackpad.
Precise cursor positioning is hit or miss, but it is with the mouse too. In either case, I usually get as close as I can, and then move the cursor with the arrow keys.
I can only do limited programming on the laptop anyway because the screen is too small. It could be that I'm a freak because I fall into the divide in between how people "should" use laptops and tablets.
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