So, we are talking about tools. First
some generalities:
We can expect that considering tools has
to be complicated, e.g., apparently the
rise of civilization involved the
development of many tools for many
purposes.
Closer to Hacker News, there is a LOT of
data. The explosion in
price/performance of computing and digital
communications has the amount and variety
of data growing. So, handling data can be
a challenge, and picking tools can also be
a challenge.
For handling data, there are some
tools/data types, e.g., SQL, IDEs, Word,
TeX, Aspell spelling checker, the old file
search utility grep, HTML, JPG, comma
separated values (CSV), spreadsheets, ....
Of course, if concentrate on one source of
data for a few narrow purposes, then can
have some specialized tools that were
expensive to develop and needed training
to learn to use but with a lot of usage
can be very productive. Maybe a good
analogy is the factory that produces the
cans of beef ravioli that I eat sometimes
for a fast meal -- no doubt they prepare
ravioli by the square mile, and I doubt
that they use a rolling pin!
Then there are people; they tend to be
different: Some of these people work in a
gold/copper mine, coal mine, on a huge
fishing trawler that goes from catching
the fish to having them frozen in retail
packages, ..., down to changing the air
filter in the family car once a year,
getting the garage door back on track
about each two years, cleaning up after
the kittens have accidents, .... Some of
this work uses big, expensive, specialized
tools, and some uses just simple, old,
general purpose tools, hammers, pliers,
screwdrivers, maybe Vise Grips, a 1/4"
electric drill, etc.
So, to give some evidence of case n = 1,
me, and in computing, I use various tools.
Examples include Google, Wikipedia,
YouTube.
But for what I do on my PC where Google,
etc., doesn't help, I settled on a broad
strategy: As much as I reasonably and
efficiently can, stay with text, standard
ASCII (maybe more accurately with some UTF
definition) text. Then to manipulate this
text, use my favorite text editor, KEDIT.
I can customize this editor using its
macro language, Kexx, a version of the M.
Cowlishaw Rexx. Rexx is no toy -- before
internets or the Internet, IBM had
something similar in their internal
computing, and a lot of it was run by
servers written in Rexx. Currently I have
something over 250 Kexx macros for KEDIT.
So, where I make use of KEDIT directly?
(a) Since some of my most important
writing is pure/applied math, I've had to
get good with D. Knuth's math word
processing TeX -- I've written about 100
macros in TeX. So, I use KEDIT with its
macros to type in documents in TeX with my
TeX macros. Now that I'm good with TeX,
it is also my favorite word processing for
letters, business cards, and more.
(b) For remembering URLs, phone numbers,
mailing addresses, other little items of
information, I have a very simple little
system based on KEDIT and a few, simple
macros. All the data is in one file of,
currently, 3,368,455 bytes. Currently I
have 5947 such entries starting in
September, 2005 and more in other files
going back some decades. With the 5947
entries and 3,368,455 bytes, that is an
average of
3,368,455 / 5947 = 566
bytes per entry.
Since
5947 / 16 = 371
on average I add an item to this file
about once a day.
KEDIT makes it fast and easy to count the
number of entries.
(c) In a file I maintain with KEDIT, I
keep medical, diet, exercise, etc.
history. I have some macros I use to
extract data to read in with Excel and
draw graphs.
That Excel will read in data from just
simple text files is terrific.
(d) Mostly KEDIT is good for editing files
one or a few
at a time, but I use the Windows file
system as a taxonomic hierarchy for
organizing the files. Then I have a
little program in Rexx that puts the data
describing
a file system subtree in a text
file with several columns of fixed widths
and use
KEDIT to sort, search, select that
content.
(e) One of my favorite macros is IDC,
insert dated comment, e.g.,
Modified at 13:24:42 on Saturday,
August 21st, 2021.
So, with IDC I can slap time/date stamps
on content and do so many times a day.
Yes, the little macro reads the file type
and puts in appropriate comment
delimiters.
Just these time/date stamps are a good,
fast, single way to provide first-cut
documentation of work -- that months or
years later are great to have if don't
have anything else.
(f) I wrote a little KEDIT macro calc,
abbreviates calculate to evaluate simple
numerical expressions. E.g., at one point
in my career my manager believed that a
disk drive of 100 million bytes was
large, much larger than necessary. At
Amazon I just ordered an external hard
disk drive with 5 trillion bytes. So,
using calc, we can find the ratio
(5 * 10*12)/(100 * 10*6) = 50,000
(g) So I write code in Rexx, Kexx, TeX, C
(occasionally), and Microsoft's .NET. And
now that I'm good with KEDIT, I use it to
write all this code. In .NET, with a
little C, for my startup I typed in code
in 100,000 lines of typing with 24,000
programming language statements. So,
about 75% of the lines are documentation
for me to understand the code! Some random
exogenous events pulled me away from that
code, but I will be back to it soon, and
then the comments will be very welcome,
get me back to 100% in understanding all
the code.
Most of the comments have tree names on my
development computer of, usually, HTML
files of .NET or other documentation, and,
sure, I have a macro that helps with that.
E.g., with one keystroke, Firefox will
display a file of HTML documentation.
The comments are essentially just text,
technical writing, and KEDIT with its
formatting is good for that. Also my
standard spell checker, Aspell, works with
that text. That is, the code is, to KEDIT
and Aspell, just text.
(h) Sure, I use KEDIT to write email and
often to read email. I went for some
years using some code I wrote in Rexx for
email -- then email got more complicated
and I had to use Outlook or now what my
ISP provides (I intend to return to
Outlook). But when I write email, I still
use KEDIT. When I receive email that is
just simple text, I use KEDIT to format
(flow it) and read it.
(i) Sometimes I still want to print some
things, e.g., shopping lists, envelopes,
etc., and use KEDIT for that.
I'm numbering, labeling, my external hard
disk drives with PASSPORTnnn sequentially
with integers nnn, and I print these with
KEDIT.
(j) Sure, eating is necessary, and I cook
my own food. For that, I develop recipes
and use KEDIT to create those. To take a
recipe to the kitchen, I can print via
KEDIT.
(k) Sometimes URLs have hex characters.
So, I have a little KEDIT macro to convert
those URLs back to just text.
(l) And, sure, I'm using KEDIT for typing
this Hacker News post.
So, as in these examples, (a) -- (l), as
much as I can I use just simple text files
maintained with KEDIT. Then I get good
with KEDIT, macros, muscle memory, etc.
and use that skill as much as I can.
I can't use KEDIT for everything, so
sometimes I use other tools.
Once I tried to use Microsoft's Visual
Studio. I didn't like the documentation
but charged ahead. I created a project,
and before I had typed in any code I
looked and saw a directory subtree with
maybe, IIRC, 50 files I knew nothing
about. I stopped right there. Maybe
someday I will see need to use an IDE,
maybe Visual Studio, and will return to
it.
All the programming I do is in languages
where the code is in just simple text
files. To me that use of simple text is
terrific, and I take advantage of it.
So, net, I use KEDIT and simple text files
for dozens of varieties of work; in
principle each variety, done with enough
volume, could be done with more
productivity with a specialized tool, but
for just my work, where I use KEDIT and
text files, none of the varieties are
worth the investment, overhead, of a
specialized tool.
By analogy, to me KEDIT is like a Swiss
Army knife with 15 tools including a can
opener. If I opened enough cans, I might
want some restaurant kitchen $500 counter
top electric can opener, but for me, now,
the Swiss Army Knife is better.