When did the ideal of end user programming slip from our fingers?

· Bits and Bobs 3/17/25
  • When did the ideal of end user programming slip from our fingers?
    • I've previously thought of it as the shift from PCs to the cloud.
      • Cloud gives the benefit of simplicity, reliability, and scale.
      • But it trades off control.
      • Your software running on your turf, to someone else's software on their turf.
    • Someone I was chatting with this week localized it to the shift from the terminal to the GUI.
      • The terminal is infinitely malleable; just text you can pipe together in whatever combination you want.
      • GUIs are shrink wrapped, pixel-perfect, every pixel in a particular place.