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These kind of things are nice and all, and on a certain level I agree: shape your environment to do the hard work for you. However, when considering overall pr
by stingraycharles 6y ago
These kind of things are nice and all, and on a certain level I agree: shape your environment to do the hard work for you.
However, when considering overall productivity, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of yak shaving, and you’ll end up with doing a lot of work in order to be “more efficient”. This always rubs me the wrong way.
And it is for this reason I typically prefer some integration into a tool that I’m already using, rather than using a vast amount of tools that I need to integrate myself.
In the end I settled on emacs for most of my things here, and since I’ve been using it for over 20 years, the investment into learning ELisp etc pays of a lot. I much rather prefer to work with the framework that eg org-mode provides, than try to find some tool that is “just a little bit better!”
Yes, it may be better, but in the end it will involve a lot of work to tie everything together. I simply don’t have the time to do that.
- EFFALO 6y agoI felt that that the author was more concerned about ownership than short-term productivity or efficiency. With ownership a different kind of productivity is evoked: knowing how (and why) every part goes together the way it does. This could lead to a flow state when managed effectively. I do agree that these exercises could lead into the realm of yak shaving, but in this context we're talking about making personal tools vs tools for others to use. I think there's a big distinction between these two approaches.
- thesephist 6y agoOP here -- I think you captured a lot of what I wanted to express. A lot of my DIY-ing is definitely about ownership: owning (1) my data completely, including how it's stored and backed up and (2) the future of these tools, so a SaaS provider can't suddenly decide next year that I'm no longer in their target market / most profitable customer segment. Agree on the distinction between building for myself vs. others. There are a hundred things I'd have done differently, were I building for someone else.
- addicted 6y agoEvery second spent on developing one of these tools will more than pay for itself in your professional career if your professional career has anything to do with software development. The time energy and effort will make the creator more efficient and more effective in nearly every project they undertake going forward in life. Making and learning, especially if they are in areas related to what you do frequently (for example, as a career) almost always pays off in overall efficiency and productivity.
- beagle3 6y agoWithin reason; building e.g. your own build tool rarely pays but sometimes does. Building your own compiler and/or IDE almost never does.