I understand people have different reasons to pursue a hobby, but I just don’t understand folks that write slop for retro computing platforms.
What I find the most rewarding about using a vintage Mac has been that it offers an alternative to the current generic, rent seeking world of software. It’s an era of constraints, different values, and more hackable internals. It’s also whatever the opposite of e-waste is.
I’m constantly amazed by the human effort required to keep these computers alive: indie hardware designers, archivists, software developers working within incredible constraints. It’s an act of care, attention, and conservation.
Every day there’s a new slop project, and they don’t have the charm of the old software: they often don’t work, they look boring, and just don’t appeal to me. They seem to embody the exact opposite values!
Of course they’re easy to ignore and not install, in reality it’s not affecting me in any way, but every time I see one of these pop up, I’m just confused. At a very fundamental level, I just don’t understand the type of person that finds that appealing.
#retrocomputing #slop #vintagemac #classicmac
Yeah! I think that’s what I find difficult to understand. It’s kind of like taking pride and credit for something that ultimately someone else did.
Earlier on I did try LLMs, and I had the illusion of doing more, but ultimately it just felt like a hollow achievement.
@ruben @agentultra It's not "kind of like" taking credit for other people's work, it is exactly that, while simultaneously accepting:
* The staggering climate and ecological impact
* The outright attack on labor by capital
* The systemic disregard of consent
* The basis in wholesale theft and plagiarism
* The assault on the very concept of objective truth
* The enrichment of the most cringe billionaire fascist motherfuckers the world has ever seen
(channelling JWZ/2026)
definitely! This is what ultimately made me stop using llms for my stuff. Once I understood the social and ecological cost of it, and the addictive element it has for people like me, I decided nope. Even IF they were better than they are: I can't imagine a productivity boost being worth this cost on the commons and environment.
@ruben I agree. For me, retro computing is about disconnecting and enjoying the process and learning. About revisiting platforms I haven’t touched in decades.
It seems to me that slop coding has given folks who otherwise couldn’t have been bothered to learn, but had an idea, to get into the hobby. They can explore and make their idea a reality without having to appreciate, learn, and spend the time and effort to do it, “the hard way.”
Some folks only want results. They don’t care for the journey.