5 ms·

Imagine a carpenter saying, "I don't want to master my tools, I just want to build things."

by User23 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago
There’s mastering the use of your tools and there’s tinkering with the windings on the electric motor inside your tools. Emacs offers users both.
jrochkind1 5y ago
How common is it for carpenters to make their own tools? I actually don't know!
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Did you write Emacs? Did I write Emacs?
- AlanYx 5y ago
  For a lot of custom carpentry, it's pretty common for carpenters to make their own jigs to solve specific problems (e.g., if you need to use your router a bit like a thickness plane to mill down some object by a couple of millimetres along some axis so it fits somewhere, you probably want to build a jig first).
- _moof 5y ago
  Pretty common, I think. I've made clamps and rove punches for instance, and I've been tempted to make drill bits. (But this is for wooden boatbuilding, which is its own uniquely crotchety corner of carpentry. Not unlike emacs...)
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  For most woodworkers, I'd say the analogy is closest to making "plugins" for existing tools. They require a little knowledge (which easily obtained on YouTube), and can greatly increase your ability to use the base tool. One example is a table saw sled, which helps you make clean, repeatable, 90º cuts. It's one of the most useful "plugins" you can have for your table saw, and relatively easy to make. Making the actual table saw, on the other hand, would be expensive and very difficult, and would require knowledge of many fields (metal working, electrical systems, etc.).
TchoBeer 5y ago
It's more like a carpenter saying "I don't want to master my car, I just need to be able to get from place to place". A mathematician isn't payed to typeset papers, they're payed to do mathematics and typesetting in LaTeX is just a means to an end.
vnorilo 5y ago
I once worked with a pretty amazing older Common Lisp programmer who used some IDE (Xanalys?) He selected forms by dragging with the mouse. Watching that felt uncomfortable, almost like physical pain. I tried to get him into paredit, but he smiled a little and said his brain isn't so fast that it could keep up with frantic fingers like mine. Indeed, he worked out things in his head before splashing into the buffers and mostly got things right by doing just a few things, slowly. Of course CL is one of the better languages for that. I think programmers overestimate the importance of editors or typing. Comfort is more important than speed or efficiency, but of course you feel discomfort if you lose the speed you are accustomed to! If you feel comfortable in whatever editor you use, congrats, your quest is complete.
- WJW 5y ago
  I can definitely sympathize with this. Typing in things has never been the bottleneck. Rather, deciding what needs to be typed in takes up the majority of the time. It probably helps that neither of my main two languages (Ruby for work/Haskell for fun) is all that verbose.

Imagine a carpenter saying, "I don't want to master my tools, I just want to build things."

by User23 5y ago

Imagine a carpenter saying, "I don't want to master my tools, I just want to build things."

There’s mastering the use of your tools and there’s tinkering with the windings on the electric motor inside your tools. Emacs offers users both.

jrochkind1 5y ago

How common is it for carpenters to make their own tools? I actually don't know!

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Did you write Emacs? Did I write Emacs?
AlanYx 5y ago
For a lot of custom carpentry, it's pretty common for carpenters to make their own jigs to solve specific problems (e.g., if you need to use your router a bit like a thickness plane to mill down some object by a couple of millimetres along some axis so it fits somewhere, you probably want to build a jig first).
_moof 5y ago
Pretty common, I think. I've made clamps and rove punches for instance, and I've been tempted to make drill bits. (But this is for wooden boatbuilding, which is its own uniquely crotchety corner of carpentry. Not unlike emacs...)
ARandomerDude 5y ago
For most woodworkers, I'd say the analogy is closest to making "plugins" for existing tools. They require a little knowledge (which easily obtained on YouTube), and can greatly increase your ability to use the base tool. One example is a table saw sled, which helps you make clean, repeatable, 90º cuts. It's one of the most useful "plugins" you can have for your table saw, and relatively easy to make. Making the actual table saw, on the other hand, would be expensive and very difficult, and would require knowledge of many fields (metal working, electrical systems, etc.).

TchoBeer 5y ago

It's more like a carpenter saying "I don't want to master my car, I just need to be able to get from place to place". A mathematician isn't payed to typeset papers, they're payed to do mathematics and typesetting in LaTeX is just a means to an end.

vnorilo 5y ago

I once worked with a pretty amazing older Common Lisp programmer who used some IDE (Xanalys?) He selected forms by dragging with the mouse. Watching that felt uncomfortable, almost like physical pain. I tried to get him into paredit, but he smiled a little and said his brain isn't so fast that it could keep up with frantic fingers like mine. Indeed, he worked out things in his head before splashing into the buffers and mostly got things right by doing just a few things, slowly. Of course CL is one of the better languages for that. I think programmers overestimate the importance of editors or typing. Comfort is more important than speed or efficiency, but of course you feel discomfort if you lose the speed you are accustomed to! If you feel comfortable in whatever editor you use, congrats, your quest is complete.

WJW 5y ago
I can definitely sympathize with this. Typing in things has never been the bottleneck. Rather, deciding what needs to be typed in takes up the majority of the time. It probably helps that neither of my main two languages (Ruby for work/Haskell for fun) is all that verbose.