[deleted]
Joey Hess' minimal approach
31–40 of 122 posts
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#32"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.
Indeed. I'm quite envious of this type of lifestyle. Although I'd take a thinkpad or an air over the dell.
My overall setup is quite similar. Xmonad & redshift are great tools for minimizing distraction over long periods of time. You can really get in the 'zone' in a way I find impossible without them.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#33"I've used nothing else since 1996." Wow, that's impressive but I'm not sure I'd be proud of not "using" any other Operating System than my favourite for 16 years.
It's a handy way of ensuring that your time spent dicking about is minimized. I used nothing but Windows from 1999 until mid-2010 (and I used MS-DOS as well between 1993 and 1999). Windows 3.x was horrid, Windows '9x was horrid, and Windows 2000 and following have their disadvantages, but there's a lot to be said for never having to relearn any of the basics. I used only Windows XP from 2002 (or 2003?) until 2010, which made things even more convenient.
Some people seem to like shaking things up every few years, but I'm not one of them - it just takes time away from doing what I consider more interesting stuff.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#34Interesting, but not totally unexpected as this is very much in the tradition of Unix terminal users. Never mind that today's "dumb terminal" is probably an order of magnitude more powerful than yesterdays mainframes, and you can fall back to even bigger servers without many problems.
But I'm always a bit surprised by small-screen laptop-only users, whether it's this rather charming off-the-grid kind or your average Macbook Air coffee shop inhabitant. I like my mechanical keyboards, large displays (area, not dpi) and desk-bound isolation. Never mind that laptops introduce quite a few technical problems (heat, upgrades, computing power) that are easily avoided by your cheap mini tower.
And I guess that's at least one minor way in which I've succeeded over distraction without even trying: I don't have a big need to mix my programming/writing/browsing with outdoorsy and/or (real-life) social elements. I wonder whether the rather common preference of landscape background pictures (e.g. Napa valley) is part of that desire.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#35"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
I hate to pull this card on you, but what have you done? We're talking about a Debian developer who has also developed (and continues to develop) basically an open-source replacement for Dropbox (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...), by himself on an incredible budget. He actually Gets Shit Done, and does it relatively efficiently. I would not be surprised at all if a factor towards being productive is the fact that his daily Internet connection doesn't support browsing Facebook. And when you are a creator rather than a consumer (especially of the written word, be it code, essays or books), screen size rarely matters.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#36big respect to this guy and he seems to make awesome software. But using a 5 year old netbook with very low resolution and 2gigs of ram, no external Screen and dialup modems for internet doesnt seem like a very productive working enviroment...but if it works for him, why not, but this is clearly is too minimal for my taste ;)
It is just random thoughts, but may be this very limited setup helps to think through software he develop more which probably results in better software overall.
I probably enjoy using whatever he writes, because it doesn't assume the latest hot.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#37I've never been to usesthis.com before. What a wonderful website! I would love to see more interviews like this.
I like the idea of usesthis. But I'm a bit disappointed that most setups are boring and not really individualized. This makes a lot of the interviews uninteresting if you don't know (care for) the developer. "Spoiler:" 2/3 seem to be using a Mac Book and a fairly common configuration. Please don't misunderstand me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that configuration. But it's not very interesting to read about.
I think Joey Hess is a major exception here because he has a very individual and interesting setup. Stallman, Russ Cox and _why are a few other interesting setups iirc.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#38"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
Haskellers don't need a lot of screen space ;)
He might suffer the first installation of ghc/platform though.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#39Let's make a petition for someone to produce this e-ink open arm laptop. I'd buy one immediately.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#40> Lately I've been focusing on programs that encourage broader use of version control systems, like git. The goal is to harness all the power that's been developed by developers for developers for managing source code, and redirect it to other purposes.
This is very interesting, especially his Kickstarter project[1]. I've always wondered how distributed revision control systems could be used in other domains.
[1] - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...