Who are you (or anyone else) to decide what works best for me? Am I not capable of making my own decisions? Do I really need a hardware company making those choices for me?
Did you not read beyond my first sentence?
Who are we as programmers to decide what works best for our users? Were the clerks at the bank not capable of deciding for themselves if their pen and paper workflows worked better for them than the computer programs we made to replace them? The typographers of yore were almost certainly more comfortable and faster using a linotype machine than this new fangled desktop publishing software, that we invented. I simply cannot wrap my head around people in our profession who kick and scream because the march of progress once in a while makes their lifes a tiny bit uncomfortable for a short while.
> Who are we as programmers to decide what works best for our users?
Where did I say that? You seem confused.
And your argument regarding publishing and banking software is a strawman intended to shift the focus away from the real argument - that of choice. Forcing a change on my workflow can have very real effects on my ability to generate income. Why should anyone be ok with that?
> Who are we as programmers to decide what works best for our users?
Where did I say that? You seem confused.
I am saying that we as programmers force people to change their habits all the time. We do it to in the name of efficiency and progress. We eliminate workflows, we make entire jobs redundant. We of all people should be able to recognise that even though change is uncomfortable, it is inevitable, and mostly for the better.
And your argument regarding publishing and banking software is a strawman intended to shift the focus away from the real argument - that of choice
Please. Even if we pretend that you don't still have the option to use a third party keyboard, or buy one of the Macs that still have the f-keys, what about the people who would prefer the new touch bar to the f-keys? What about their choice?
Forcing a change on my workflow can have very real effects on my ability to generate income
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. You are not going to feel a very real effect on your ability to generate an income simply by being forced to learn a different set of shortcut keys to step through a debugger.
Well, in this case, it's not deprecated. It's deprecated by one computer manufacturer. There are more than enough other computer companies still willing to sell you a keyboard layout like the one you've been used to for the last 30+ years.
The problem is, say you're an iOS developer, you get no choice; you HAVE to run a Mac and be at Apple's mercy.
Firstly, it's not true that you don't get a choice. Apple still makes laptops with f-keys. And you can always plug in a 3rd party keyboard.
Secondly, an more importantly, of all the options Apple don't give you (and there are an infinite amount of them), this one is so minor. Why, other this is how you are used to it, are the important reasons for using specifically the f-keys to step through a debugger? What is wrong with any of the other keys?
I agree of course that change merely for the sake of change is not a good idea, but surely, surely we can all recognise that Apple did not make this change on whim, simply to try something different?
You can use Visual Studio on Windows to write iOS apps with Xamarin or Cordova, using a network-attached Mac solely as build server, without ever having to use it (except for updating stuff, via VNC)
Did you not read beyond my first sentence?
Who are we as programmers to decide what works best for our users? Were the clerks at the bank not capable of deciding for themselves if their pen and paper workflows worked better for them than the computer programs we made to replace them? The typographers of yore were almost certainly more comfortable and faster using a linotype machine than this new fangled desktop publishing software, that we invented. I simply cannot wrap my head around people in our profession who kick and scream because the march of progress once in a while makes their lifes a tiny bit uncomfortable for a short while.