“ Under Windows was DOS; under DOS, BASIC; and under them both the date of its origins recorded like a birth memory. Here was the very opposite of the authoritative, all-knowing system with its pretty screenful of icons. Here was the antidote to Microsoft’s many protections. The mere impulse toward Linux had led me into an act of desktop archaeology. And down under all those piles of stuff, the secret was written: We build our computers the way we build our cities — over time, without a plan
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The dumbing-down of programming
REBELLING AGAINST MICROSOFT, “MY COMPUTER” AND EASY-TO-USE WIZARDS, AN ENGINEER REDISCOVERS THE JOYS OF DIFFICULT COMPUTING.
