Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://paulgraham.com/
Oh, I thought he was talking about an actual store. I suppose this explains the believe it or not part.
I was thinking the believe it or not was on account of who invented the Yahoo store?
Paul Graham : uses this.
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree: the site accomplished its only stated goal. As someone who was approached by usesthis to be on their site (just last week: I have not said "no" yet) I can say that the guy who runs it specifically seems to have not cared much about how to optimize for generating insight into the /why/ behind what people are using. Personally, however, I found that quite disappointing. :( Reading through the list of people an…
Judging by the wide range of profiles, I'd say the format is flexible enough to address all of your concerns without changing a thing. Some of the featured users focus only on what they use to get work done, while others come off as proud technohoarders. Some choose to be explicit about their philosophy, while others let the setup speak for itself. I don't really favor one approach over the other, but I always find t…
Can you please provide more detail? I provided an explicit issue--"hardware first, software second"--along with and a specific very common example (iOS SDK) and how I felt that ordering choice (inflexible: I checked with the site's editor) limited the ability for many people to be able to explain that "why" in an effective manner. I would hope you'd be able to show me some counter examples, or show me how I'm simply missing some obvious reinterpretation that would allow me to look past this bug.
The specific hardware and software I use to do my work is something I have spent a lot of explicit time thinking about, both alone and with the people I work with (we have spent so much time bickering over what the absolute best keyboard in the world is it would sicken many people), and I simply do not see a way to make these stories insightful or compelling with the constraint of explicitly discussing hardware first and software second. :(
A final comment: I did not say that they aren't doing anything right. I stated quite explicitly that I "personally" felt there were other interesting goals that were being left aside, and I will say that apparently some other people agree with me or we would not have seen the couple comments in this thread that led me to decide to post something to expand on the thought. Please do not assume that people expressing their personal opinions about something implies that that they believe that thing has no value to anyone.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#33One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.
http://stephen.wolfram.usesthis.com/
"My current desktop system is a Windows 7 64-bit 8-core machine"
Although to be fair, he also says it "changes practically every week."
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#34Paul Graham has a screen smaller then mine and uses two software I didn't know existed which I will now check out, that's everything vaguely "interesting" I found in this.
Thank you for commenting on this article.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#35What the hell? American McGee has large eyes like a classic angel: http://american.mcgee.usesthis.com/
edit: Look, I'm not dissing the man. His eyes are angelically beautiful. I must admit, probably not an insight into what tools he uses, but I just hadn't noticed before.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#36One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.
Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books).
I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools these days.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/ Another windows sighting. And the most fascinating of the interviews I've read.
I know this isn't a popular POV, but I've always thought that developers should work on last gen hardware. Getting good performance out of last gen hardware ensures great performance for the typical user. (okay, let's be reasonable, the build machine should be stupid fast so nobody is sitting around for half a day while the repository builds).
I think that would be true for testing, but not for actual development. When I'm working I want to marginalize anything that might slow me down. You did mention the build machine should be fast - but don't most people build locally first before pushing out?
I guess it also depends on what you're building. I mostly work on stuff that isn't used by a consumer. It's going to run as a service on a machine or network of machines far more powerful than my PC. I imagine most people developing for consumers though are building websites or mobile apps. Mobile apps should be tested on a variety of devices, and it would take a pretty intense website to start bogging down most people's machines I imagine.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#38One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.
Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…
> you can be so much more productive with more modern tools these days.
I'm more productive and make much better-looking documents with emacs+xetex than with Word. YMMV.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#39One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.
I met Mitch recently at Noisebridge and we discussed the idea of a Linux LiveUSB dev environment for people starting out, but not familiar enough with linux to self set-up.
Re: Paul Graham : uses this.
#40One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.
Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…
I find that 90% little hard to buy. Based on my experience, I would guess they all (Mac/Linux/Windows) have roughly 1/3rd share, the trend being rising for Mac and downward for Windows. (Okay, my view may be Western centric.)