Unfortunately, it appears that many people, both end users, power users and programmers alike, have made up their minds and want their computers to be appliances instead of tools. In fact, strict regimentation, curation and immutable defaults are in wide demand by consumers of all demographics. Having to manually tune something is considered ever more blasphemous these days.<p>I think we will end up losing a lot in this process, not least of which the ensuing moral crisis as system software research becomes increasingly dead in favor of having our machines just be whatever black box the vendor has crafted, indeed our very mental model of a computing environment being whatever is presented to us obliquely.<p>And all of this happening while many beat their chests demanding that programming be made a compulsory subject in public schools. What a sickening irony.