3 ms·

I agree with the sentiment in the headline, but want to offer a counter example. Consider Emacs vs. Notepad++, for the purpose of editing code. Emacs in this e

I agree with the sentiment in the headline, but want to offer a counter example. Consider Emacs vs. Notepad++, for the purpose of editing code. Emacs in this example represents "maximal flexibility" for having a configuration interface where almost every aspect of its function can be (re)programmed, and Notepad++ represents "maximal cooperation" for having a configuration interface and limited toolset tailored to the task specifically at hand (editing code). I'm not going to contribute code to either project; submitting patches for a "maximally cooperative" system to adapt it to your use case is just an advanced and inconvenient form of "maximal flexibility". In my experience this has the opposite relationship to that described in the article. Getting started with Emacs is a significant investment (as per the article, "everything is possible but nothing is easy"), while Notepad++ is pretty much pick-up-and-go out of the box, but over time the extensibility of the former pays off in a better functionality/amount of work ratio. There is an example of "maximal flexibility" in the article, but none for "maximal cooperation", and I'd like to see one.

robbyt 6y ago
I recently worked with a developer who proudly told me he has over 25 years experience. Unfortunately, he wasn't a very good developer. In talking to him, he told me he switched jobs on average every 3-5 years. And I realized this was the problem. He didn't have 25 years of experience, he had 5 years of experience, 5 times over because he never went deep enough to master his craft. He stuck with Notepad++, never bothered to understand topics like hard tabs vs. soft tabs, never added automated linting or reformat to his coding workflow, didn't bother writing tests (or testable code). I'm sure many of us have worked with someone who's terminal is misconfigured, has a messy PATH or their computer is in a general state of disarray. This is an example of short-term usability. Long term assumes general mastery of a tool/system... But this isn't always the case.

robbyt 6y ago

I recently worked with a developer who proudly told me he has over 25 years experience. Unfortunately, he wasn't a very good developer. In talking to him, he told me he switched jobs on average every 3-5 years. And I realized this was the problem. He didn't have 25 years of experience, he had 5 years of experience, 5 times over because he never went deep enough to master his craft. He stuck with Notepad++, never bothered to understand topics like hard tabs vs. soft tabs, never added automated linting or reformat to his coding workflow, didn't bother writing tests (or testable code). I'm sure many of us have worked with someone who's terminal is misconfigured, has a messy PATH or their computer is in a general state of disarray. This is an example of short-term usability. Long term assumes general mastery of a tool/system... But this isn't always the case.