4 ms·

The site is about interviewing people asking them what tools they use. I think that is achieved in this.

saurik 16y ago
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 and what they had to say I'm thinking, "man, I wonder if that was a random choice, or something that person spent a lot of time thinking about". Maybe I'm weird, but just knowing that someone who's work I admire has a Compaq Concerto isn't interesting if I don't understand the tradeoffs that went into its purchase. Another complaint I have is that the site attempts what I believe to be a strong and artificial separation between hardware and software, and even requires a fixed ordering: hardware first, software second. In my experience, software and hardware are really two different physical manifestations of the same underlying concepts (maybe I've spent way too much time on projects that involved writing software to accomplish the same goal as a previous generation's fixed function hardware), and end up having dependency relationships that criss-cross the supposed boundary. As an example, many people interviewed on the site mentioned that they own a MacBook only because they were recently doing a lot of iPhone development and needed to use Apple's iOS SDK. However, it led to awkward phrasing to do that in the hardware section (before they had a chance to go more in depth into the software later), so the comment is stilted at the top and then short changed later (as it was already mentioned earlier). It is also quite common, however, for people to first look at physical device properties like form factor, screen size, or input subsystem, leading them to make decisions that sound like "once I decided I had to have a netbook, I started evaluating whether to run Debian or Windows 7: either would be fine as I really only needed to run Chrome and a terminal". I therefore look at this website as a giant list of missed opportunities to learn something really interesting and important about a number of really awesome people, and while I again agree: the site accomplished its stated goal, I think it is appropriate to judge a site on whether the underlying concept was appropriate in addition to whether they succeeded at their implementation.
- qjz 16y ago
  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 the choice of what to include or not include fascinating. In any case, it's one of the few sites where I read every article, so I think they're doing something right.
  - saurik 16y ago
    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.

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 and what they had to say I'm thinking, "man, I wonder if that was a random choice, or something that person spent a lot of time thinking about". Maybe I'm weird, but just knowing that someone who's work I admire has a Compaq Concerto isn't interesting if I don't understand the tradeoffs that went into its purchase. Another complaint I have is that the site attempts what I believe to be a strong and artificial separation between hardware and software, and even requires a fixed ordering: hardware first, software second. In my experience, software and hardware are really two different physical manifestations of the same underlying concepts (maybe I've spent way too much time on projects that involved writing software to accomplish the same goal as a previous generation's fixed function hardware), and end up having dependency relationships that criss-cross the supposed boundary. As an example, many people interviewed on the site mentioned that they own a MacBook only because they were recently doing a lot of iPhone development and needed to use Apple's iOS SDK. However, it led to awkward phrasing to do that in the hardware section (before they had a chance to go more in depth into the software later), so the comment is stilted at the top and then short changed later (as it was already mentioned earlier). It is also quite common, however, for people to first look at physical device properties like form factor, screen size, or input subsystem, leading them to make decisions that sound like "once I decided I had to have a netbook, I started evaluating whether to run Debian or Windows 7: either would be fine as I really only needed to run Chrome and a terminal". I therefore look at this website as a giant list of missed opportunities to learn something really interesting and important about a number of really awesome people, and while I again agree: the site accomplished its stated goal, I think it is appropriate to judge a site on whether the underlying concept was appropriate in addition to whether they succeeded at their implementation.

qjz 16y ago
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 the choice of what to include or not include fascinating. In any case, it's one of the few sites where I read every article, so I think they're doing something right.
- saurik 16y ago
  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.