Re: Any way to make coding on MacOS non-painful?
As a newbie dev, I used Emacs with Emacspeak for years, using Markdown, Org-mode, a bit of Python, all that. Then I got into VS Code, really take a hard look at it a few weeks ago, and I've not used my Mac since. Before,, I mainly only used the Mac, switching to Windows for web stuff, Google Docs and all that. Now I only use Windows. VS Code is just, like, thousands of times better. It's like going from a manual brailler to a braille display connected to a computer or iPhone. Things just freaking work! Like, extensions are recommended, I don't have to look for important stuff unless I want more functionality, I don't have Emacspeak interupting itself to tell me about a warning I don't care about at the moment, no weird "insert-string-rectangle" command to make lines of text Markdown lists, just select the list and toggle unordered list, and boom! It's freaking done!
I mean, I've even tried XCode. But with Playgrounds only *now* becoming accessible for learning to code with the Everyone can Code thing, and having to interact like four times to get into the editor, it's just really bad, and I really love, in VS code, not having to "sharpen my pencils" all the time just to prepare to work. Also, added on to the coding stuff, Windows' web support just blows the Mac out of the water. I use Free Code Camp, and the editor is really hard to use on a Mac. I don't know how it'll be when Big Sur comes out, hopefully they've learned a tad, and I *can* say that latency is no longer an issue in Big Sur, at least in the Beta. But they've not fixed the Terminal, as of the time of this writing. They have not fixed VoiceOver so that it has a queue, like every other screen reader. So even if XCode somehow becomes much easier to use, even if the latency issue is fixed, the Mac will still be a more-locked-down computer with a screen reader that can't even work right with the Mac's own Terminal app. I mean, no third-party stuff, just Apple. And, after all, Apple controls all this, right? It should be a beautiful walled garden, right? Well it's not. And if the Apple accessibility spokespeople, on the AppleVis podcast and elsewhere, want the mac to be a great coding platform for blind people, they'll have to work a heck of a lot harder than they have been in years past. Because they've lost me. I plan to build for the web, and not iOS and Swift and such. Why? Because Free Code Camp works for me, it's not about trying to learn a game world for kids and spending 10 minutes just feeling around the stupid world tiles, trying to connect the dots, and using a poorly accessible editor because the Swift Playgrounds app is just another Catalyst iPad app, and they all have very poor accessibility. So, even copying and pasting code into Text Edit and working there, and copying and pasting back works better than that garbage. Also, Free Code Camp treats you like you know what you're doing, like you're an intelligent human being, whereas Apple tends to treat you like they know best, like you're a poor, helpless customer that needs their hand held and protected from the big bad emulator developers and awful hobbyist who could put some random sideloaded app on your iPhone and steal, yes steal! your bank info. I like being treated with respect, thank you. I love being treated like I can handle the administration and usage of my devices. And that's what Microsoft gives me, with Windows. Rather than allow tech-illiterate people to remain so, Apple could choose to educate them, or at least try to. But no, Apple knows best. Mommy knows best.
if only Google cared about accessibility. I love VoiceOver on iOS, and the screen recognition will be a huge game changer, and Google will *have* to cramble to catch up, or be forever left behind. Oh wait they already are left behind, never mind. But, it looks like we'll have the discordant package of iPhones for mobile, and Windows for PC's, for a long while still. Until Windows 10 X, hopefully.
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