I have coded since I was 13. A world where I can’t code would be bleak. Where would I be if I hadn’t learned to code? If my Commodore 64 hadn’t had a programming language as the default shell, would I have been able to learn to code?
Unix has a programming language as its default shell. Bash is not much better than the Commodore 64’s BASIC, but I have seen shell scripts that run thousands of lines.
My phone does not have a programming language as a shell, and I would like to automate numerous minor actions. IFTTT tries to fill that gap, and I’ve tried using it. It’s clunky, unfortunately, to fix a hard problem with how Android works.
I want to reach inside an Android app and receive an event the author assumed was purely internal. When that event fires, I want to call an internal function from another app.
Do I have the right to do that? It would stop working if one of those apps changed during an upgrade. I could put either app into an inconsistent state, such that my phone stopped working, or started randomly dialing 911.
I would need some guardrails, but I assert I have the right to code on the computer I carry in my pocket.