Many of these ideas depend on knowing the user’s preferences, patterns, communications, events and health. This is where the opportunity lies for Apple - the phone and watch know so much about you, that Apple could focus on smartly assembling the context for various LLM interactions, in a privacy-preserving way.
Applesoft BASIC is just so darn readable. Youngsters have nothing comparable these days to learn the basics of expressing an algorithm without having to know a lot more.
And if it ever became too slow, you could reimplement the slow part in 6502 assembler, which has its own elegance. Great way to learn, glad I came up that way.
The book this is from, David Ahl’s More BASIC Computer Games, was hugely influential on me when I was 12. After my parents sent me to bed I’d read it under the covers trying to imagine how the computer would behave at every step. Great times!
In addition to Dartmouth (which made BASIC available to other schools, including offering remote access), David Ahl evangelized BASIC while working for DEC, and ended up catalyzing the microcomputer revolution (which BASIC was a big part of):
I had rapidly worsening RSI, thought my career as a developer was ending. Switching to VIM completely solved it. Not to take away from what fancy keyboards can do for you, but if you were already contemplating VIM then this would be a great (additional) reason to try it.
Only if you agree to stop buying/consuming any product made outside of the US (or containing components from outside the US).
reply