1. It's been the case for many, many decades; nothing new there, and
2. All your examples are end-user applications, not operating systems.
Operating systems - and perhaps frameworks in general - are different, in that complexity is much more of a problem. Operating system is not just another application, it's the foundation of the entire thing. All this text processing stuff you've mentioned: this is just a part of Unix, the "icing". What matters lies below.
Computers were their own separate thing in the UNIX era.
Back when computers were their own separate thing, Unix was just one of a bunch of vastly different systems. Very large market share - perhaps even bigger than Unix - was VMS, and MVS was a thing too; then you had a bunch of less common ones, like Pr1me.
Now, however, literally every phone runs Unix.
With an appreciation of simplicity seems to come a love of the analog, because that's the ultimate UNIX philosophy, not using a computer at all.
Or mechanical :-) Again, this is very true, but it is like this for a reason: it's because we understand the complexity involved and its consequences.
Linux really blurs the lines with what is part of the OS, and what is part of the application, since there's now a common set of middleware daemons that are used in most mainstream distros.
It used to be much more loose and modular, and also much more unpredictable with no real stable platform.
Now it's more like GNU/Linux/systemd/DBus/xdg, and most of what I love about Linux comes from the fact we've eventually evolved a real "platform" that is vaguely standard between popular distros, with just enough modularity to make devuan and void possible so we don't get rioting.
Android is even more like that. In practice it's inseparable from all the other stuff on top, and you never interact with UNIXy concepts. They don't really even want you to directly deal with files.
And.... it all works fine. Android is a bit of a developer nightmare, but it's wonderful for users, and Ubuntu-likes are great for both users and developers(As long as they don't want to customize stuff under the hood too much).
I rarely meet a techie who doesn't have quite the fondness for the mechanical though, and they all seem to be very smart, and very capable, so there must be some sort of reason.
I've rarely had trouble with the more complex things, either at home or at work, so I suspect some of it comes down to how much you value a sense of control and understanding.
You're probably gonna have a bad time with a mega-ultra-framework if you want to design an architecture to fit the task, and your own vision of Good Code, and then implement that.
But you'll probably have a great time if you enjoy finding ways to fit the application into The One True Way the framework is built for.
It seems like a lot of people who enjoy analog and especially paper notetaking specifically really like the lack of any predetermined structure.
Simple things always claim to be very logical and consistent and built from a small set of concepts, but it seems like the real result, and probably why people like them, is that they invite you to build more yourself, so you have in practice a near infinite set of features with a different subset in every project.
Comments
What you are saying is true, however:
1. It's been the case for many, many decades; nothing new there, and
2. All your examples are end-user applications, not operating systems.
Operating systems - and perhaps frameworks in general - are different, in that complexity is much more of a problem. Operating system is not just another application, it's the foundation of the entire thing. All this text processing stuff you've mentioned: this is just a part of Unix, the "icing". What matters lies below.
Back when computers were their own separate thing, Unix was just one of a bunch of vastly different systems. Very large market share - perhaps even bigger than Unix - was VMS, and MVS was a thing too; then you had a bunch of less common ones, like Pr1me.
Now, however, literally every phone runs Unix.
Or mechanical :-) Again, this is very true, but it is like this for a reason: it's because we understand the complexity involved and its consequences.
Linux really blurs the lines with what is part of the OS, and what is part of the application, since there's now a common set of middleware daemons that are used in most mainstream distros.
It used to be much more loose and modular, and also much more unpredictable with no real stable platform.
Now it's more like GNU/Linux/systemd/DBus/xdg, and most of what I love about Linux comes from the fact we've eventually evolved a real "platform" that is vaguely standard between popular distros, with just enough modularity to make devuan and void possible so we don't get rioting.
Android is even more like that. In practice it's inseparable from all the other stuff on top, and you never interact with UNIXy concepts. They don't really even want you to directly deal with files.
And.... it all works fine. Android is a bit of a developer nightmare, but it's wonderful for users, and Ubuntu-likes are great for both users and developers(As long as they don't want to customize stuff under the hood too much).
I rarely meet a techie who doesn't have quite the fondness for the mechanical though, and they all seem to be very smart, and very capable, so there must be some sort of reason.
I've rarely had trouble with the more complex things, either at home or at work, so I suspect some of it comes down to how much you value a sense of control and understanding.
You're probably gonna have a bad time with a mega-ultra-framework if you want to design an architecture to fit the task, and your own vision of Good Code, and then implement that.
But you'll probably have a great time if you enjoy finding ways to fit the application into The One True Way the framework is built for.
It seems like a lot of people who enjoy analog and especially paper notetaking specifically really like the lack of any predetermined structure.
Simple things always claim to be very logical and consistent and built from a small set of concepts, but it seems like the real result, and probably why people like them, is that they invite you to build more yourself, so you have in practice a near infinite set of features with a different subset in every project.