Interesting. If you don't mind, I have a few questions:

1. Is the "big VM with root" running macOS itself, or a different OS?

2. Do you do any work on the bare metal version of macOS, or do you just start the VM in the morning and do everything from there?

3. How do you experience the performance/UX of the VM?

4. Do you know why Company B IT has set up this VM solution, instead of a plain old MacBook locked down with Apple's enterprise management tools?

5. Can you explain more about the App Store? Is it the actual Apple App Store but restricted to a curated set of apps, or is it a different system? If so, is the store a custom in-house thing or is it provided by a vendor?

Can you elaborate about your predictions for how the benefits of current capabilities will be applied? And your thoughts on how to build with it?

Do you have any suggestions on how to help people achieve and maintain good mental health?

It's true that addiction is ultimately a psychological problem. It's true that people engage in addictive behaviors as a coping mechanism to avoid difficult emotions.

It's also true that the Internet has enabled a lot of deliberately addictive content. Phones keep that content constantly at hand. And it's difficult to avoid having a phone since they also provide utilities.

I'd like to live in a world where everyone had such great mental wellness that they were impervious to the temptations of their phones. What are some serious tactics to make that happen?

Yes, the market exists and there are several competitors.

I've looked at https://sunbeamwireless.com, which runs their Android variant, BasicOS. Haven't purchased yet though. Light Phone is similar.

Gabb and Pinwheel sell phones oriented at kids, and both have OSes based on Android.

Unfortunately, as you say stock Android as well as iOS don't make effective locks. What they offer is passable for parents managing their kids' phones, although in practice kids often find ways to bypass.

It's very difficult for an adult who wants to self-regulate. There are some hacks you can do, like MDM, but it's not at all straightforward.

I'm looking to connect with people about this topic. In fact I want a business partner, although I'm also interested in people who just have input.

Thanks for the reference.

As I've been thinking about this, I do wonder if starting with grids as the foundation would have been a better approach. As I understand it, early CSS focused on stuff like color and font style, with primitive layout tools. Over time better tools have been bolted on, but it's messy.

Say we merged flexbox and grid into a unified system, and threw away the other layout algorithms. At the same time, made some tweaks to clarify margin, border, padding, and overflow. Maybe that's a good foundation.

I have to assume that's partly because of the availability of implementations, tooling, and developer familiarity. Many platforms will let you toss in a web view, and if you want to set up e.g. a configuration screen with text and toggles, HTML/CSS will get the job done, more easily than maintaining a custom system that's peripheral to the core purpose of your app.

I don't want to be overly negative, but I just can't view CSS as "pretty great."

I appreciate the inherent difficulty of using 1-dimensional static text to specify a 2-dimensional dynamic layout. Still, basically every programming problem involves defining abstractions over some domain concept and expressing that in the syntax of your programming language. Somehow that's harder in CSS than any other language I've used.

Within web dev I find both HTML and JS much easier to work with, despite their imperfections.

Suppose we could create a backwards-incompatible system to replace CSS. How would we do it?

Are there any books or papers on how to create a coherent layout system?

What about alternatives like Qt, Tk, SwiftUI, etc.? I've never used anything besides CSS. Are any of the actually-implemented systems in the wild better? If so, what makes them better?

I want a system that provides a better interface for developers, but how? If we could start over, what are the design principles?

Well, the parentheses don't necessarily have to be perfect on the paper :) I can fix them once it's on a computer.

That said, some manual tricks that could help: my former colleague had a simple trick of counting up with his fingers for open-parens, and then back down for close-parens.

I could also imagine using more line breaks and indentation to help keep the parens straight. It might be ugly, but on paper that formatting is only to support my thinking, it does not also need to cater to the committed source code.

Do you believe then that it's impossible to identify a good situation until you take the job? There are no reliable job search tactics to select for better settings?

I would say, for example, that a job interview helps provide a vibe for the current situation at a company. But it's not a perfect signal, and as an individual I can't go on that many interviews. Hence looking for other approaches people have tried.

> Companies tend to optimize for profit, not for the comfort of programmers.

I believe that's a separate issue from my question. Seeking profit doesn't force a company to hire incompetent or apathetic programmers. If anything it wastes money on salaries that don't deliver as many new product features to sell, or as many improvements that will increase customer retention.