I love that you put "user friendly" in quotes. As if these products were for somebody other than the users.
Computers have taken over the world precisely because we have worked very hard to make them approachable by mere mortals. The only reason Google matters is that they figured out how to make the search engine much more user friendly. Apple is on top of the world because they made a more user-friendly music player, phone, and portable computer. And we HNers are all getting paid stupid amounts of money because the wide adoption of computing has created high demand.
Nobody is talking about coding away individual responsibility. They're talking about removing another bit of pointless friction from the system, so that the tools are more effective for the tool-users.
And I'll add that cars are heading in exactly the direction that you lampoon. If the car industry had thought like you, they'd still be back on hand-cranking to start the car, needing to maintain the battery's water level, and having to wear goggles. And soon Google will have solved the driving problem, mainly thanks to the way consumer adoption has driven down the costs of computing.
Computers have taken over the world precisely because we have worked very hard to make them approachable by mere mortals. The only reason Google matters is that they figured out how to make the search engine much more user friendly. Apple is on top of the world because they made a more user-friendly music player, phone, and portable computer. And we HNers are all getting paid stupid amounts of money because the wide adoption of computing has created high demand.
Nobody is talking about coding away individual responsibility. They're talking about removing another bit of pointless friction from the system, so that the tools are more effective for the tool-users.
And I'll add that cars are heading in exactly the direction that you lampoon. If the car industry had thought like you, they'd still be back on hand-cranking to start the car, needing to maintain the battery's water level, and having to wear goggles. And soon Google will have solved the driving problem, mainly thanks to the way consumer adoption has driven down the costs of computing.