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> how often they get distracted or go down rabbit holes when tweaking editor config or using advanced features. I've worked with people who seem to spend half t
by jorams 6y ago
> how often they get distracted or go down rabbit holes when tweaking editor config or using advanced features. I've worked with people who seem to spend half their day on this stuff.
> So while it can certainly be impressive to watch someone who has mastered their editor
I'd say anyone who spends a significant amount of time tweaking their editor while they should be working, outside of (infrequent) setup periods, has not mastered their editor (or is just slacking off). The entire point of setting this up is to make you more efficient.
- daemin 6y agoSo should you write a short script, or build a tool, or write a macro for your editor to do some repetitive thing or just do it manually for now (and therefore always in future). Same thing goes with having a pipeline of transforming data from one format to another. Do you use a simple ad-hoc method where you just use features in the tools (Text filtering + Import to Excel + Manually creating graphs), or do you write scripts to automate part or all of the process? When should you stop doing things manually and automate them instead?
- Reelin 6y ago> When should you stop doing things manually and automate them instead? When your best estimate is that spending the time to automate it will be a net benefit in the long run. (https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/) This is hardly unique to configuring an editor or IDE though. If someone is repeatedly and consistently spending "half their day" configuring their editor then either they don't really know how to use it, or they're slacking off, or they consistently make bad time estimates (https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/), or you don't actually understand what it is they're doing and why.