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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

"Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? "

No, and that's a problem. Do you see programming languages shipped with every computer? No, but that's how it used to be. Most shipped with BASIC while Unix shipped with C. I guess Macs come with Python, but just CLI no IDE - not even idle. Is there some reason not to ship development tools? Do you not want the curious to have ready access to dig in and understand the stuff they use every day?

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Macs come with Python (and Idle is included), Ruby, PHP, Perl, BASH, Apache web server, git, Vim, Emacs, Pico, Nano etc and XCode with clang for C/C++/Objective C/Objective C++ is a free download (used to ship on OS DVD but OS is no longer shipped on physical media).

Java used to be bundled too out of the box, but Apple has deprecated their JVM. Of course Oracle has up to date JDK for OS X now.

Really getting compilers and dev tools for Unix OSes is trivially easy. Almost everything is free if not open source.

> Is there some reason not to ship development tools? Do you not want the curious to have ready access to dig in and understand the stuff they use every day?

More and mroe macs are being sold with SSD's, and installing Xcode uses a good 4-5 gigs (+1GB per platform in documentation). That's a good enough reason for me to not install it when I don't need it.

Does this argument apply to development tools in the browser, or do you think this is likely in the near future? As in, does it currently negatively affect performance or significantly impact the size of the browser (honest question)?

The curious won't be perplexed by such a simple barrier. They'd find this Web IDE, had it been an add-on, and happily continue exploring. Is that little convenience enough to justify bloating an executable millions of people use daily with a lot of code that only 5% of them (a very generous estimate) will ever use?

We should be splitting software into smaller components, and let the user choose what they need. There's no need to pander to lazy or unwilling-to-learn users by barfing up all they need into a single binary, thereby adding stuff most of the people won't ever use.

That's a solid point, assuming that it actually does create bloat (which I don't know much about, I admit).

Could another advantage of coupling browsers with development tools be that it makes it logistically easier to maintain 'parity' between the browser and its development tools? Or is that not how these things are done?

Edit: I see my question has been addressed elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933515)

We shouldn't really be asking if some excess software (and an IDE is pretty heavy) is causing bloat or not. If it's not needed by most of the people, it is bloat. If not so much for the user, then also for the development team.

I like when software is doing one single thing, and is great at doing that one single thing. With Firefox needing to address a lot of problems to stay on par with Chrome, the last thing it needs is more cruft to worry about in the browser itself.

They won't though. All you see in web dev tools is the UI as all the actual clever stuff is still hidden away from you on servers.

With an increase of client-side apps combined with server api's this is less the case, though, isn't it?

I can imagine quite a few 'web apps' that won't try to actively obfuscate how their client app operates. In those cases having browser-based development tools makes it much easier to tinker with and inspect the app...

Well, with most single-page apps, bulk of the logic is running on the client, with the backend just exposing a REST API.

I have idle on Mavericks in /usr/bin/idle. There is also emacs and ruby.

>Do you not want the curious to have ready access to dig in and understand the stuff they use every day?

Yeah, pretty much.

Combine offshoring with the baffling obsession some programmers have with teaching EVERYONE their trade and you can expect compensation levels to plummet in the coming years.

There will still be a need for dedicated computer programmers, but I think that if everyone had basic scripting knowledge or at least was not afraid of gaining that knowledge, the world would be a better place for it. And if more people understood what it took to program, there might be less under or overestimating of the value of a good programmer.

That's the optimist's outlook.

I could just as easily envision an army of cheap, self-taught "programmers" making applications held together with spit and glue and causing a race to the bottom in the industry (see the residential construction industry for an example of this).

Right. Let's keep the rest of the world illiterate, as long as we keep making nice salaries.

The "baffling" obsession might come from the fact that many programmers realize that basic programming knowledge is the coming equivalent of literacy. And that they'd never be in the position they're in now if generations of CS people hadn't freely shared what they learned.

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