I know I’ve written about this before, but I need to rant about tech companies pay lip service about encouraging young people to “code” but then throw up barriers to end-users (ie, regular people, not developers) writing code for their own use.
The example that’s been bugging me lately is Google Chrome, which asks you, every single time it’s started, if you want to disable “developer mode” extensions, with disable as the default, natch.
You see, you can’t run a Chrome extension unless you are in “developer mode” to start with. Then you can write some code, load it into Chrome, and you’re off to the races. This is good for, you know, developing, but also nice for people who just want to write their own extension, for their own use, and that will be the end of it.
Except they will be nagged perpetually for trying to do so. The solution is to upload your extension to the Chrome Web Store, where it can be validated by Google according to a secret formula of tests, and given a seal of approval (maybe).
But you don’t want to upload your extension to the Chrome Web Store? Well, too fscking bad, kid! Maybe you should stick to Scratch if you don’t want to run with the big boys.
It’s not just Google. If you want to run an extension on Firefox, you have to upload it to Mozilla, too — but at least if you just want to use it yourself, you can skip the human validation step. (NB: If you do want to share the extension, you will be dropped into a queue where a human being will — eventually — look at your extension. I tried upgrading Detrumpify on Firefox last week and I’m still waiting for approval.)
And don’t even get me started on Apple, where you need to shell out $99 to do any kind if development at all.
I don’t know how this works on phone apps, but I suspect it’s as complicated.
I get it: there are bad guys out there and we need to be protected from them. And these systems are maybe unavoidably complex. But, damn, I don’t hear anybody saying out loud that we really are losing something as we move to “app culture.” The home DIY hacker is being squeezed.