General Purpose Computing is and ought to be an app on a user friendly internet device. An important app, but one of many.
The fact that the internet device is actually a special-purpose simulator running on general-purpose hardware is an implementation detail. Even most programmers want to do other activities on their devices, like check their email. This should be co-equal with programming; anything you do in your coding environment shouldn't break your ability to get email.
Is general-purpose-computing-as-an-app dying? No: repl.it for kids/consumers is great, there's an explosion of nocode/locode for consumers/businesses; and free tiers of the public clouds are available if you really really want to muck with linux.
> General Purpose Computing is and ought to be an app on a user friendly internet device. An important app, but one of many.
If "a user friendly internet device" here is code for "an internet device that doesn't provide its owner full control over it" then... no, absolutely not.
Having control over your own device isn't just about learning to program. Certainly that's important, but it's not the whole story. The question is: what can you do once you've learned? If your device restricts what you're allowed to do, and you're at the mercy of the platform provider, the power dynamic between the user and the platform is hugely asymmetric.
The fact that the internet device is actually a special-purpose simulator running on general-purpose hardware is an implementation detail. Even most programmers want to do other activities on their devices, like check their email. This should be co-equal with programming; anything you do in your coding environment shouldn't break your ability to get email.
Is general-purpose-computing-as-an-app dying? No: repl.it for kids/consumers is great, there's an explosion of nocode/locode for consumers/businesses; and free tiers of the public clouds are available if you really really want to muck with linux.