Whatever works for you

#1

Post by tbassetto » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 5:41 PM UTC

Whatever works for you
marco.org

Re: Whatever works for you

#2

Post by Yhippa » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 6:58 PM UTC

What was the point of this rant? He's going to stop telling people to go all-Apple and boast his Apple-ness?

Re: Whatever works for you

#3

Post by JoelMcCracken » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 7:07 PM UTC

This is important.

We are all different. Human life is full of tradeoffs, and some of those tradeoffs lead to exclusions, and some of those exclusions may be untenable to some, etc.

I like and use Apple, Emacs, etc, but I can certainly see why others might choose not to use them. They aren't wrong. They're just different.

Re: Whatever works for you

#4

Post by tomstuart » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 7:12 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #2

What was the point of this rant? He's going to stop telling people to go all-Apple and boast his Apple-ness?

The point is that it's important to realise that not everyone has the same priorities, or the same constraints, as you do. Marco says he's happy to relinquish some control in order to have things work the way they're supposed to, but he recognises that other people may not have the freedom or the desire to make the same trade-off.

This recognition is called empathy, and it's a useful trait for people involved in product design, online discussions &c.

Re: Whatever works for you

#5

Post by Kylekramer » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 7:17 PM UTC

tomstuart wrote: post #4

Yhippa wrote: post #2

What was the point of this rant? He's going to stop telling people to go all-Apple and boast his Apple-ness?

The point is that it's important to realise that not everyone has the same priorities, or the same constraints, as you do. Marco says he's happy to relinquish some control in order to have things work the way they're supposed to, but he recognises that other people may not have the freedom or the desire to make the same trade-off. This recognition is called empathy, and it's a useful trait for people involved in prod…

And I'd buy it more if his actions followed his words. I listened to his podcast once, and the Android/Google bashing was so pervasive it continued even to the point they were making fun of it during an ad that mentioned a company had an Android app (something to the effect of "They even have an Android app, if you are stuck with an Android"). An ad! People paid money to his show to have their work/customers belittled.

Re: Whatever works for you

#6

Post by adamio » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 7:20 PM UTC

There's a difference between evangelizing a setup to someone for selfish reasons (to bring more users hoping developers follow, to make it easier to troubleshoot), and for reasons the other person just doesn't know or grasp yet (using POP instead of IMAP is causing your phone and pc to be out of sync)

Re: Whatever works for you

#7

Post by pnathan » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 7:23 PM UTC

The flip side to this is as computer professionals, what we do with a computer and how we have built our workflow significantly accelerates our work with a computer.

E.g., easy file versioning and sync is fundamentally a solved problem, if you are willing to take the initial hit of workflow modification (git, sftp, etc).

So it's okay to teach people how to do it faster and better.

Re: Whatever works for you

#8

Post by Tashtego » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 7:26 PM UTC

This post demonstrated a sense of humility ("I probably don't know how to solve your problem") and empathy ("I recognize that your problem is not the same as my problem") that are often sorely lacking in the community of software geeks talking about software. Great stuff.