You're right about a lot but I really want to argue against the idea "people don't care." They do care. They care when their phone dies after 2 years and they have to buy a new one because updates have rendered it unusable. They care when the phone/pc/laptop gets hot with only a few tabs open. Polls seem to show people generally care about climate change, and as little as PC's use in energy (relative to transportation and electricity generation for things like heating), they probably would care about this too. Users just don't understand things could be better, especially if they're younger and they don't remember windows 2000 or dos for example. On the other hand, every older person I know curses the newfangled things, even if there are some new connectivity capabilities of modern machines.
And the thing is that connectivity has little shit to do with the layers of abstraction to idk render a button on a screen. Even developers, as your anecdote shows, lack the creativity to imagine better things! Christ if that doesn't show something is wrong than what will?
I’m not even that old (early 30s) and I curse at 99% of the tech I use. Especially tech that we use to build other tech.
I started my career as a software engineer writing C, then C++ working on desktop software. Things made sense back then, and that was just 10 years ago.
I’ve tried contributing features to two Electron-based apps. I gave up on both. I just can’t make sense of it.
I’ve sat down countless times over the last decade telling myself I’m going to teach myself this damn frontend web stuff. I gave up every time. It’s ridiculous.
Young folks who have only been exposed to modern garbage have no idea how good it was before the web took over.
I often wonder how this came to be. How we went from well-documented, efficient, sound APIs and libraries to the monstrosity that we have now. I have nothing to offer though.
And the thing is that connectivity has little shit to do with the layers of abstraction to idk render a button on a screen. Even developers, as your anecdote shows, lack the creativity to imagine better things! Christ if that doesn't show something is wrong than what will?