Programming for Mennonites?

[Sudsy]

I agree, one I have not heard before. I was a computer mainframe programmer and computer systems designer and have no idea how any of the software I developed could ever be considered as something 'evil'. I am curious as to how this sort of thing could ever be associated with evil.

Most languages don't distinguish between "evil" and "bad". Hebrew doesn't. Modern software is bad. This is the result of bad values. Modern people's values are entirely bad which means that everything that they design is bad. Are such values evil? This is just a semantic question.

Why did God command the Israelites to destroy everything they found in the Canaanite cities that they conquered? Because these Canaanites were just like members of the modern West. Everything they produced was bad, and God didn't want the Israelites to learn bad values from the bad things that the Canaanites produced.

Thankyou. However, I can't agree that modern man is so depraved that he cannot produce good. Even unbelievers in Christ, like yourself, can and do produce what scripture calls good. It is just that all the goodness we produce will not grant us eternal life. That is a gift of God not anything we could do or boast about. Jesus represents what is good. He is our example to follow. I understand you don't believe in Him, right ?

[Pelerin]

Regarding the topic (and expanded to include Amish users as well), I would say that if an OS were developed that would be capable of running programs currently being built for Windows, that would go a long way toward a good start for independence from the push toward required internet access.
The basic requirements (to my mind) would be cutting out all links to internet access, except some "tunnel" to allow email service, or better yet, a separate network for email that could port out to the internet via special service companies.

You could pretty easily set up Windows (or Linux) to block all ports except IMAP/POP ones for email.

However, software development is very expensive, and so with such a limited market, if the initial release allowed for main-stream Windows programs to be installed, then it would be difficult to convince users to make the shift later on. (This is mainly a financial consideration, but related to both the initial cost of the program license, and also to the cost of training and lost employee time during the transition.)

With this consideration, it might be best to start with developing individual software packages that would be comparable in capabilities to main stream offerings in the same field, but specifically as "Desktop" or "perpetual" licensing. There is already a well-established trend in the open market toward subscription-only licensing, and so this approach would seem to be the fastest way to gain a share in the market, possibly even beyond the (very conservative) Mennonite and Amish business markets. Accounting would be my first priority, and it could be that this might be done in conjunction with the Classic Accounting program (for Lunix) in use on the Classic Steward word processors. (It WILL already run in the Windows environment, but has a ways to go before it can be considered a full replacement for programs like QuickBooks. The Eagle Business Management System accounting program was a good alternative, until they also largely switched to the subscription model. I don't have a current status for ABC Accounting.)

But seriously, the big challenge will be in the CAD field. It has become essential in many Amish-owned businesses, and much more complex to learn.

Perhaps the time has passed for this whole idea, and current users will be forced to make the decision of whether to allow themselves to be drug along to a place they never imagined ending up, or stepping back from the advancements in software development, and just working with older versions.

I think that there is something coming beyond all of this, however - computing as a service. (If you were around in the old days before personal computers, this would be like those big business computer systems where each office worker used a "dumb terminal" (now commonly referred to as a thin client) that could not function w/o the connection to the main frame computer in a back room - a BIG back room, with often rows of computers. Only now the 'main frame' is some place else entirely, and the connection is over the internet.
(I'm probably wasting my time writing all this, so I'll stop here.)

I’m slowly working on building a new desktop and I’m pretty strongly considering skipping Windows altogether and going with Linux (probably some form of Ubuntu). The availability of software for what I need was one hesitation, but so far it looks like there’s a good Linux option for everything I want to do, and usually a free and open source option at that.

I’ve gotten the sense over the last few years that software more or less stopped progressing about ten tears ago and has started getting worse in some cases. There’s a lot of different reasons for it, but it boils down to the fact that locking down options and other anti-user behavior turns out to be pretty profitable (forcing software-as-service is one strategy). It’s hard to entice the serfs to stay on the manor, but you can make it hard to leave or darkpattern the average user into thinking it’s impossible.

All that to say, alternative options like Linux have gotten better and more user-friendly to the point where I think I could be comfortable with it. I think (and hope) that as more and more people get tired of being treated poorly, they’ll try the alternatives which will in turn encourage more development and more user-friendliness which will open up the alternatives to less and less tech-savvy people.

[Josh]

Franklin is on to something

You think so?

Are we going to get an essay here about the "good" parts of Nazi Germany or how they were better than the 2022 America?

Yeah, I’m having a hard time with the idea that overly complex software is a sign of unremitting evil and depravity, but the Nazis who systematically murdered six million people had some good things about them.

Getting back on topic, have you read “IBM and the Holocaust”? Part of the evil of a totalitarian state like the USSR or 1930s Germany was the use of technology for mass-scaled brutality.

[Josh]

So far, the only person to have developed a modern operating system, language, and tools like compilers is Terry Davis, who developed TempleOS. It is unique and a stunning accomplishment to be done by one person in isolation.

His motivation for doing so was that he thought God told him to.

[Neto]

So far, the only person to have developed a modern operating system, language, and tools like compilers is Terry Davis, who developed TempleOS. It is unique and a stunning accomplishment to be done by one person in isolation.

His motivation for doing so was that he thought God told him to.

Thanks, Josh. I see that it's been around for quite a long time already. I'm really surprised that I've never heard of it before.

EDIT: Reading about him, however, makes him sound rather unhinged. And on the technical side, networking capability is a requirement for business.

[Josh]

So far, the only person to have developed a modern operating system, language, and tools like compilers is Terry Davis, who developed TempleOS. It is unique and a stunning accomplishment to be done by one person in isolation.

His motivation for doing so was that he thought God told him to.

Thanks, Josh. I see that it's been around for quite a long time already. I'm really surprised that I've never heard of it before.

EDIT: Reading about him, however, makes him sound rather unhinged. And on the technical side, networking capability is a requirement for business.

Considering he died because he was standing on train tracks and got hit by a freight train during a period in his life when he chose homelessness, I'd say he may have been a bit outside of the societally expected norms of behaviour. Nonetheless, what he did is utterly amazing and will probably never again be repeated by a single individual.

TempleOS has a truly unique mode of operation that hasn't been replicated (yet) in any other operating system. Adding networking would be quite simple, although I'm not really sure what the purpose of doing so would be.

[Neto]

So far, the only person to have developed a modern operating system, language, and tools like compilers is Terry Davis, who developed TempleOS. It is unique and a stunning accomplishment to be done by one person in isolation.

His motivation for doing so was that he thought God told him to.

Thanks, Josh. I see that it's been around for quite a long time already. I'm really surprised that I've never heard of it before.

EDIT: Reading about him, however, makes him sound rather unhinged. And on the technical side, networking capability is a requirement for business.

Considering he died because he was standing on train tracks and got hit by a freight train during a period in his life when he chose homelessness, I'd say he may have been a bit outside of the societally expected norms of behaviour. Nonetheless, what he did is utterly amazing and will probably never again be repeated by a single individual.

TempleOS has a truly unique mode of operation that hasn't been replicated (yet) in any other operating system. Adding networking would be quite simple, although I'm not really sure what the purpose of doing so would be.

In the context of my interest in, and responses to, this topic, it is very simple - I work with Amish business owners whose companies have a dozen (and in one case more than 25) different work stations, all connected via private intranet in order to share a single financial management file. For a home owner, yes, the importance of networking is relatively very low.

[Franklin]

So far, the only person to have developed a modern operating system, language, and tools like compilers is Terry Davis, who developed TempleOS. It is unique and a stunning accomplishment to be done by one person in isolation.

I haven't tried TempleOS but I have watched videos by Terry Davis and I mostly agree with his views. Like most intelligent people, he was driven crazy by evil modern culture. My issue with TempleOS is that it wasn't designed to be practical and was never used for commercial applications. My Luan is practical and I use it in commercial applications. Luan obviously includes a language and compiler. It also includes a Java library of fundamental tools including a web server.

Because of this difference, evil modern people just ridiculed Terry Davis but they hate me because I am a real threat to their evil. If I could find any other programmers who are interested in actively resisting depraved modern programming, then we could build up a serious alternative.

[Ken]

Thanks, Josh. I see that it's been around for quite a long time already. I'm really surprised that I've never heard of it before.

EDIT: Reading about him, however, makes him sound rather unhinged. And on the technical side, networking capability is a requirement for business.

Considering he died because he was standing on train tracks and got hit by a freight train during a period in his life when he chose homelessness, I'd say he may have been a bit outside of the societally expected norms of behaviour. Nonetheless, what he did is utterly amazing and will probably never again be repeated by a single individual.

TempleOS has a truly unique mode of operation that hasn't been replicated (yet) in any other operating system. Adding networking would be quite simple, although I'm not really sure what the purpose of doing so would be.

In the context of my interest in, and responses to, this topic, it is very simple - I work with Amish business owners whose companies have a dozen (and in one case more than 25) different work stations, all connected via private intranet in order to share a single financial management file. For a home owner, yes, the importance of networking is relatively very low.

I teach at a HS where students are given Chromebooks and we have lots of spares sitting around in the library and work rooms. Any student or teacher can pick up any Chromebook anywhere in the school and access all of their files, homework assignments, reading materials, etc. are all instantly there. Makes no difference which machine they use. An ordinary school Chromebook is probably just a $150 device which is cheaper than most science textbooks these days. Back in the day 10-20 years ago when schools had desktop and laptop PCs, students had to save their work to personal floppy drives or flash drives and woe to the student who accidentally saved something to the C-drive of a school computer as they had to track down that same computer on a cart which is probably now in some other classroom being used by some other student in order to find their work. Something that was an endless hassle. And if they didn't happen to remember the number of the computer they were using the previous day they were just out of luck.

Likewise my wife is a doctor. She can walk into any exam room or office in any clinic or hospital within her employer's network and log onto any computer and access all her files and the medical records of whichever patient she might be dealing with. Prior to that they had to maintain paper records and do things like fax lab results back and forth on paper.

That is all networking. It represents an enormous increase in productivity for any organization large enough to need multiple computers.

[Szdfan]

You think so?

Are we going to get an essay here about the "good" parts of Nazi Germany or how they were better than the 2022 America?

Yeah, I’m having a hard time with the idea that overly complex software is a sign of unremitting evil and depravity, but the Nazis who systematically murdered six million people had some good things about them.

Getting back on topic, have you read “IBM and the Holocaust”? Part of the evil of a totalitarian state like the USSR or 1930s Germany was the use of technology for mass-scaled brutality.

I haven't read it, but I don't disagree that technology can be used by a totalitarian state to do evil. That's not what Franklin is arguing -- he's saying that the code itself is evil because it's been made by evil people.