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Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

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Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#51

Post by freehunter »

sk1pper wrote: post #32

To me, true minimalism on my desktop came from stopping messing around with different window managers, IDEs, whatever to try to maximize my experience. Specifically, command line interfaces to Slack and GPM just add more headache and frustration. My setup: a terminal with tmux; Firefox; Spotify. (Recently switched from GPM, would recommend). Stock everything except dark themes on some stuff and caps lock->ctrl. I don…

Learning to stop spending so much time customizing everything and work with the defaults was one of the hardest but most productive lessons I’ve learned over the years. I used to have a custom bashrc and custom vim and everything on my phone was custom and I put a lot of effort into it. I even found the perfect keyboard layout for me and switched my keyboards to that. To the point where I couldn’t effectively use someone else’s machine.

And then I became a consultant and was logging into someone else’s machine every day, often when I couldn’t install any customizations at all. I learned to love bash as-is, and vim as-is. And my custom launcher stopped working, so I switched back to the default Android launcher. And then my work gave me an iPhone that I couldn’t customize. And suddenly I was spending more time working and less time customizing and my productivity shot through the roof. All I had to do was stop seeking things to make me work better and actually just start working. And in addition to higher productivity, I now had more free time in the day because my work got done faster.

It really is freeing in a Zen-like fashion to just use a tool as-is and not constantly wonder how you could make it 5% better or 3% faster.

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#52

Post by swozey »

b0rsuk wrote: post #16

I thought I was alone. Every one of us minimalists draws the line somewhere else. I like vim, Python, Rust, RSS, web of documents rather than web of applications, static blog generators, roguelike games, symbols and symbolic graphics in computer games and boardgames. I prefer Ultima IV graphics to Ultima V graphics , because the latter started drawing individual torches, chairs, dishes, bushes, etc. I'm not anti-mode…

> I'm saving for an E-ink device, it's too bead the technology stagnated because of tablets and smartphones.

While I'm one who thinks there's always room for improvement, I've owned about 5-6 various Kindles and if you're interested in having hundreds of books on one portable device you should just grab one.

I've got the 1st (I believe) Paperwhite and it's all I need. I've looked at the newer Paperwhite and the Oasis but I just don't need the improvements they offer. Any paperwhite is fantastic. The reason I did upgrade to the paperwhite from whatever Kindle I had prior was the backlight was an absolute revolution. I used to have a battery powered light I had to stick on my previous kindle.

The $80 for a Paperwhite is a great deal for what you get. I have 0 complaints. It could be a little faster and I prefer buying books on Amazon from my phone or laptop (edit: and not through the Kindle directly) then reading them on the Kindle but it's not a show stopper at all.

Also, word of advice, if you're into Audible you can often find better deals by buying the Kindle version w/ Whispersync. I've almost bought $15-20 audible books before then saw that the kindle book was $7 and after that purchase the audiobook would be $3-5. It's not always the case but I can frequently find good deals on buying both.

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#53

Post by lprd »

cellover wrote: post #15

i3wm has been a huge productivity boost for me as a development machine at home for the following reasons: - no distractions - minimalism, most navigation on the keyboard - easy to setup a startup script that preloads your default screens / workspaces / apps setup - easy to map your workspaces in your mind From machine boot to coding: 30 seconds. https://twitter.com/Phonosheet/status/952179820447911936

Is there an equivilent to i3 in the mac ecosystem? I currently use iTerm with tmux... so would using a window manager, on top of all that, be overkill?

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#54

Post by heavenlyblue »

suprfnk wrote: post #10
heavenlyblue wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I mainly understand the point author tries to make: for example, it takes time to learn all of the shirtcuts in any GUI application (let's say, Slack) and become a power-user in it; so why not have a proper console interface if it's the same case for pushing buttons? Nevertheless Slack still manages to do it badly: Cmd+Shift+K takes 3 seconds to load the list of channels for a quick jump. How's that considere…

> it takes time to learn all of the shirtcuts in any GUI application I'd say in most cases it takes more time to learn a console application. GUI's these days are, mostly, pretty intuitive. CLI applications are not intuitive at all. The difference is, for me, that GUI use quickly levels out in efficiency. _If_ I have learned the CLI commands and know them well, I generally can do tasks a whole lot quicker than a GUI…

What I am speaking for here is not the CLI per se, but the fact that a CLI interface is generally a flat interface. That is: there's one place where you will be able access all of the commands, and as much the help for them.

A multi-tabbed configuration would be the worst counter-example of the former. On the other hand mentioning IDEA again - their config window (Cmd+,) directly allows one to search for the elements of the configuration in a flat manner. That's damn efficient.

Have you ever tried to scroll through a list of 100s of items? What if all of these items are in pop-over menu that closes if you accidentally click outside it? How much easier that is in a console though.

I would always vouch for software that is both easy to use right from the start, but neither does not hide it's functionality anymore: just the way we have moved from yellow pages on the internet arranged in a tree-like fashion for a purely flat Google interface, I would like to be able to use software in the same non-hierarchical way.

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#55

Post by qznc »

ssivark wrote: post #46

> Every change I’ve made in my working environment over the past year or so has also been a lessening of immersiveness. My interfaces have become less rich, less colorful, less dynamic. I really like the author's place -vs- tool metaphor to contrast wannabe immersive experiences with tools that stay out of your way. I don't think it makes sense to avoid having places you go to (where you feel "at home") -- I mean tha…

I also like the distinction of “tool” and “place”. It feels like a useful mental concept.

I can see a relation to the economics of software development. Companies want their products to be places, so they capture a slice of your attention and deepen awareness of their brand. Nvidia is an example: It is just a single part of the computer hardware, yet it comes with a GUI tool and often demands attention.

Free software can afford to become a tool. Imagine if you boot a Linux desktop and various involved projects show you a series of splash screens first: This desktop experience brought to you by systemd, dbus, dnsmasq, CUPS, NetworkManager, PulseAudio, Gnome, Mozilla Firefox, Gnome Keyring Daemon, gvfsd, and bash.

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#56

Post by auto »

freehunter wrote: post #51
sk1pper wrote: post #32

To me, true minimalism on my desktop came from stopping messing around with different window managers, IDEs, whatever to try to maximize my experience. Specifically, command line interfaces to Slack and GPM just add more headache and frustration. My setup: a terminal with tmux; Firefox; Spotify. (Recently switched from GPM, would recommend). Stock everything except dark themes on some stuff and caps lock->ctrl. I don…

Learning to stop spending so much time customizing everything and work with the defaults was one of the hardest but most productive lessons I’ve learned over the years. I used to have a custom bashrc and custom vim and everything on my phone was custom and I put a lot of effort into it. I even found the perfect keyboard layout for me and switched my keyboards to that. To the point where I couldn’t effectively use som…

The most important, non-default vim configuration for me is line numbers, and a simple "set number" when ssh'ing onto a machine to check logs has basically become my digital equivalent to getting a solid, familiar grip on a hammer before swinging it.

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#57

Post by heavenlyblue »

seawlf wrote: post #44
heavenlyblue wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I mainly understand the point author tries to make: for example, it takes time to learn all of the shirtcuts in any GUI application (let's say, Slack) and become a power-user in it; so why not have a proper console interface if it's the same case for pushing buttons? Nevertheless Slack still manages to do it badly: Cmd+Shift+K takes 3 seconds to load the list of channels for a quick jump. How's that considere…

For what it's worth, you can just to Ctrl+K (and I assume Cmd+K) in Slack to quickly jump to a channel, no need for shift.

Thanks for the tip. But I am still appalled: 0.5 sec to show the dialog, 2 more seconds to load the chat window (MBP 2014). That's depressing.

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#59

Post by b0rsuk »

swozey wrote: post #52
b0rsuk wrote: post #16

I thought I was alone. Every one of us minimalists draws the line somewhere else. I like vim, Python, Rust, RSS, web of documents rather than web of applications, static blog generators, roguelike games, symbols and symbolic graphics in computer games and boardgames. I prefer Ultima IV graphics to Ultima V graphics , because the latter started drawing individual torches, chairs, dishes, bushes, etc. I'm not anti-mode…

> I'm saving for an E-ink device, it's too bead the technology stagnated because of tablets and smartphones. While I'm one who thinks there's always room for improvement, I've owned about 5-6 various Kindles and if you're interested in having hundreds of books on one portable device you should just grab one. I've got the 1st (I believe) Paperwhite and it's all I need. I've looked at the newer Paperwhite and the Oasis…

It's more matter of lack of money than "waiting for the right one". I would prefer a colorful screen so I can comfortably read programming books too, but there are workarounds, like typeface trickery described in the article.

Also, I would prefer a device that isn't from Amazon. They're probably all "made in China" anyway so any of them can be bugged, I guess...

Re: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker

#60

Post by rollcat »

sk1pper wrote: post #32

To me, true minimalism on my desktop came from stopping messing around with different window managers, IDEs, whatever to try to maximize my experience. Specifically, command line interfaces to Slack and GPM just add more headache and frustration. My setup: a terminal with tmux; Firefox; Spotify. (Recently switched from GPM, would recommend). Stock everything except dark themes on some stuff and caps lock->ctrl. I don…

Recently I've had the opposite experience, trying to un-customise my Emacs config.

First I've tried mg. Nope, back to Emacs. Then I've tried no init file at all, but the defaults were really driving me crazy.

I've tried Spacemacs in Evil mode. It's an amazing and very polished package, and so many things just make better sense... But the Vi editing style is just not for me, I needed to get stuff done and muscle memory was getting in my way. Next I've tried Spacemacs without Evil, and then Prelude, and both were quite decent, except I was missing maybe half a dozen of my most common tweaks... Like C-x C-a to call align-regexp. When I started copying over just the bits from my old config that I needed the most... And turning off some of the more annoying stuff in Prelude (eg. I dislike both helm and ido)... Look, we're back to square 1.

I went back to my old config that I've been tweaking endlessly for over a decade. I finally feel productive again.

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