> But let's be honest, what you're doing is a narrow specialisation - and that is what you're being paid for
That's your unfounded opinion man. You have no idea what I'm doing.
There's only two reasons to use a computer: One is because it is an entertaining way to spend your time and money, the other is because it's a way to make money.
> Why not let the application paint the pixels directly?
Partly because they do it badly, and partly because it's harder for other applications to read the pixels.
Think about how the clipboard has to work: The application just told the display to write some text there, but the clipboard has to ask again what text is there, wait for a response, and let the other program know. Meanwhile the terminal just knows, so it's faster.
> I'm not talking about learning Photoshop, I'm talking about quitting Photoshop. On a Mac, the "close" button is in the upper left corner of the window
And you learned that somehow. You can learn other things too.
> These extensions are non-portable
So what? They're portable to every terminal I use, every new terminal being made, and if you want, any terminal you use. The Mac isn't portable to anything except another mac.
> Partly because they do it badly, and partly because it's harder for other applications to read the pixels.
I can select text in a web browser or a spreadsheet or a chat app just fine.
> The application just told the display to write some text there, but the clipboard has to ask again what text is there, wait for a response, and let the other program know. Meanwhile the terminal just knows, so it's faster.
How does a terminal emulator render text on the screen then? Your screen is made of pixels.
> And you learned that somehow. You can learn other things too.
You're missing my point entirely, but you seem to enjoy taking an hour to open every new door. I won't judge that.
The reason you're having a hard time communicating is because, honestly, you do not understand how these things work. You've made assumptions about how they work but be honest with yourself, could you code them up yourself? I don't mean gluing some libraries together, I mean straight up in C. I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to would say they couldn't (I sure couldn't!). Not because lack of experience in C but because they have a better understanding in all the details that goes into these things.
> How does a terminal emulator render text on the screen then? Your screen is made of pixels.
This alone says a lot, even if you don't know it. Do you know how pixels are painted on a screen? I know you got this thought in your head like "duh, you just give each one an RGB value". Great! But how do you determine what pixel gets what values? How do you define a letter? It is not just as easy as making a predefined box where you have constructed the letter inside. Look up ligatures. Now how do you do colors? How do you define different fonts? How do you scale? How do you scale without turning your text into a bunch of giant pixelated crap? Do me a favor, increase the font size on your terminal and keep going to a really ridiculous size. Then do the reverse, make it ridiculously small. Everything still should look sharp. You can't do that by having a predefined box that says where to shade and not shade without aliasing. It wouldn't look sharp when big nor small because even going small the interpolation methods are still going to introduce aliasing. To go big you either need a fucking gigantic image for each letter or something different.
You're not going to be able to communicate effectively because you're actively demonstrating to people that you think you know more about how these things work than you actually do. I get it. The modern way people learn CS and programming is so high level and there's this bad culture of being know-it-alls, as if there is some shame in not knowing how things work. Shit's complex. Stop pretending like it isn't. There's a huge difference in thinking "there's a lot of complexity here, I need to approximate and just get going" vs "shits easy". If you take the latter you'll never build anything of quality because the truth is that there's massive amounts of complexity even in the most mundane things. If you gain a deep expertise in any single one thing this truth will be self-evident. So thing is, by thinking things are easy you're more telling on yourself that you have no depth. It's fine to be a generalist, but a generalist can't be effective if they think depth doesn't exist. You might as well try walking in the middle of the ocean, because I mean, hey, you were able to walk around on the shore of the beach, why would it be any different?
That's your unfounded opinion man. You have no idea what I'm doing.
There's only two reasons to use a computer: One is because it is an entertaining way to spend your time and money, the other is because it's a way to make money.
> Why not let the application paint the pixels directly?
Partly because they do it badly, and partly because it's harder for other applications to read the pixels.
Think about how the clipboard has to work: The application just told the display to write some text there, but the clipboard has to ask again what text is there, wait for a response, and let the other program know. Meanwhile the terminal just knows, so it's faster.
> I'm not talking about learning Photoshop, I'm talking about quitting Photoshop. On a Mac, the "close" button is in the upper left corner of the window
And you learned that somehow. You can learn other things too.
> These extensions are non-portable
So what? They're portable to every terminal I use, every new terminal being made, and if you want, any terminal you use. The Mac isn't portable to anything except another mac.