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Good Tools Are Invisible

gingerbill.org

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Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#111

Post by sph »

jshaqaw wrote: post #81

Obsessive hacker tools like Emacs are not a productivity enhancer. But If you find them fun go for it. You are allowed to have fun. You are allowed to enjoy your environment. If tinkering with Emacs is fun for you go for it. It's prob not replacing mental cycles for "productive" work. It's replacing zoning out with social media or YouTube between productive work times. I can't justify using Emacs myself on a producti…

This is an objectively idiotic and uninformed take.

Do you people think we spend our weekends tweaking our configs because that is how we get our fun? Some do, sure, the vast majority have created their config once and find themselves more productive compared to whatever alternative you might be suggesting. Configuring vim or eMacs is an investment, as you are likely to still see it around in 20 years. Being familiar with one’s tools is the key to productivity.

Calling it an ‘obsessive hacker tool’ just shows you don’t know what you’re talking about, but come with preconceived notions about why people prefer other tools.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#112

Post by exiguus »

throwaw12 wrote: post #66

Invisible work doesnt lead to promotion, hence FAANG companies stopped making invisible+good tools, if things are invisible they get deprecated or stay in KTLO and eventually die

That's true. It's like care work; e.g. taking meeting notes. But instead of stopping it, make them visible.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#113

Post by computerfriend »

gingerBill wrote: post #86
jshaqaw wrote: post #81

Obsessive hacker tools like Emacs are not a productivity enhancer. But If you find them fun go for it. You are allowed to have fun. You are allowed to enjoy your environment. If tinkering with Emacs is fun for you go for it. It's prob not replacing mental cycles for "productive" work. It's replacing zoning out with social media or YouTube between productive work times. I can't justify using Emacs myself on a producti…

Which is kind of what I was arguing. Understand that having "fun" is not necessarily equivalent to being "productive". And even by an individuals own standards, the two can be completely different. If you are having fun, and it's a hobby: who cares? If it's in the professional setting, make sure what you are doing is not actually wasting time and/or money, i.e. be productive.

If my measured productivity decreases but my ability to find joy in what I do increases, it's probably worth it. Not to mention the second-order productivity boost that comes along with enjoying one's work.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#115

Post by lionkor »

dtj1123 wrote: post #114

I like TUIs because I can pipe the output of CLIs directly into them, and I don't have to leave my terminal environment. GUIs can't compete with that.

TUI and CLI isn't the same thing. A badly written TUI will fail to check isatty() on stdin and will dump ANSI escape codes, which are not trivial to remove from the output as they follow a format that has different formats, lengths and sentinels that denote the ending.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#116

Post by jt2190 »

bensyverson wrote: post #74

The effect of the interface becoming "invisible" is actually a function of time spent in the interface. I think what the author is reacting to is discretionary friction; designers or product folks adding features or complexity. The thing is, that friction may be necessary in order to achieve a certain task (think about resolving a merge conflict). And given enough time in the interface, even those "disruptive" steps…

> … discretionary friction; designers or product folks adding features or complexity.

This is far more precise. The article talks about this from the users side, how there is a class of user who enjoys learning all of these “extra” features, even though they ultimately provide less value than the core features.

>> If people find vim, emacs, or whatever genuinely good and productive, I’m not going to criticize them for using it. People are most comfortable with what they know. But for the people I am discussing, that same familiarity blinds them to their tools’ flaws, and leads them to celebrate those flaws, flaunting them as games.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#118

Post by jt2190 »

sph wrote: post #108
zaphar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know quite a few people who use vim because they do enjoy the puzzle. So there are absolutely people as he describes. Saying that there aren't people like that just undermines your point.

Geez, I’m not saying there are none. I’m saying it’s silly to characterise it as an editor for puzzle lovers. You knowing ‘quite a few people’ can’t be generalised to the millions that use vim daily.

The article discuses that specific subset of users who are into puzzle solving, so we should ground this discussion around that point and not fall into the “tool x is good/bad” pointless debate.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#119

Post by ozim »

Huh? Facebook mindless scrolling for drones?

Don’t agree especially with Vim. There are tools you have to learn first to use them properly not to harm yourself.

Author picked wrong analogy.

It is like nagging that excavator has some leavers instead of steering wheel.

Someone nagging they can’t quit Vim is far from Vim being example of bad tool.

Year of Linux on desktop is there as most of games actually run on Linux now thanks to Steam and SteamDeck.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#120

Post by saghm »

A corollary to this I've experienced (and observed in many others) is that maintainers of good tools will very often have a much more negative perception of how users collectively view their tool than how they view it in reality. It can be hard to tell the difference between "10 users complained to me today about bugs/missing features and 9990 used it without issue" and "10 users complained to me today about bugs/missing features and 90 used it without issue", despite there being a huge amount of effort needed to go from having 90% user satisfaction and 99.9%.

I have a strong suspicion that this is a major factor in why so many open source maintainers experience burnout; the unhappy users are going to be more visible than the happy ones, and the fraction unhappy new users needed to produce the same volume of bug reports/feature requests goes down with respect the to rate at which new people start using something. This essentially creates an illusion to the maintainer that no matter how much they work to improve things, nothing they do has made a difference in the overall quality of what people experience, and that saps the motivation to keep going.

I don't really have a good solution to this problem. The only obvious answer is to be more vocal with praise when something works well, but that's the type of collective action problem that tends to not really ever happen in reality. I've personally tried to go out of my way to give frequent and enthusiastic positive feedback when something works well for me, but unless everyone starts doing this, I'm not going to be able to make too much of a difference.

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