5 ms·

"Why is it that no one has undertaken the task of cleaning the Augean stables of elementary differential equations? I will hazard an answer: for the same reason

• NhanH 4y ago
  Because people can’t agree on which change would be the most useful (we have limited capability to change things, regardless of how easy the change would be), nor when it is necessary.
• st-keller 4y ago
  And in addition to the fight against vested interests, we have to invest a lot of energy against stupidity and to jump through artificial loops set up by lawyers, administrators and managers. Which leaves so litte to actually do something!
• atemerev 4y ago
  The vi editor was designed for slow terminals and a particular keyboard without arrow keys (ADM-3A terminal keyboard), yet after 46 years there is no shortage of vi fans that insist that modal editing (an adaptation for slow terminals) and hjkl (an adaptation for a keyboard that used to have no arrow keys) are inherently superior for all modern editing needs. :)
  • chongli 4y ago
    Terminals remain dreadfully slow compared to the speed of thought. People prefer vi because it's the best editing paradigm discovered so far which achieves one thing: reduce, as much as possible, the delay between a thought in mind and a corresponding change in the document. Other paradigms put too many context switches between my thoughts and the changes I want to see. I do not want to take my hands off the home row to reach the cursor keys, or God forbid the mouse. I also do not want to destroy my pinkie finger with endless usage of modifier keys. So that leaves me with vi (and kakoune).
    • dragandj 4y ago
      Why would anyone use pinkie for modifier keys? Nowadays you can reconfigure positions of CTRL and Meta and Shift to your taste. I happily us Emacs without ever stretching my fingers, because all these keys sit happily under my thumbs (literally).
      • chongli 4y ago
        "First you need to buy a custom keyboard that puts all the modifier keys under your thumbs" is not a very enticing pitch for a text editor. Doubly so for those of us on laptops where the idea of carrying around an external keyboard is a non-starter.
    • atemerev 4y ago
      Well, for me, to record my thought as quickly as possible, it is vitally important for the editor to always be in the input mode, I can’t lose time to remember the modal context I am currently in (and emacs is hardly better, as it can suddenly switch its focus to some command buffer, and not come back unless some specific action is taken).
      • Lio 4y ago
        I don’t want to advocate for you to use something that doesn’t fit your preferences but for the record Vim/NeoVim can work that way too. You can start it in Insert mode and you can have it stay in Insert mode as you run a single command using C-o. There’s also a plethora of Insert mode ctrl shortcuts which are worth learning in addition to Command mode stuff. If you’re on the emacs path you'll be able to do all the same stuff, just differently. The major point is that terminal based software is fully keyboard driven and you can commit the shortcuts to muscle memory and compose them.
        • atemerev 4y ago
          That’s interesting, thank you.
      • chongli 4y ago
• stoneman24 4y ago
  In general, most people hate change. We have divided life, knowledge, every aspect into little known boxes. Change requires us to work, adapt to the alteration. Perhaps reconsider our viewpoints, re-actions and even occupation. Change happens more typically when the new idea slowly seep into main stream society and old ways recede as people retire (or die). Modern technology has vastly increased the rate of change (ideas, lifestyles, jobs etc) by making the transmission of idea much easier and faster. But this places a high demand on anybody reading the news (drinking the firehouse of the internet) and trying to keep up.
• chongli 4y ago
  I just finished writing a comment in another thread (about macOS) on how I'm tired of all the change in the software industry. There's just a constant churn and change for its own sake. UX designers, especially, seem to love continuously disrupting my workflow by rearranging the interface in ways that surprise me and offer little/no obvious benefit. Here we have the opposite: stagnation, a lack of change. Corruption and nepotism everywhere gumming up the works. To address your point: I believe the reason we cannot devise such societies is because vested interests are more motivated and better equipped to bend the rules to their advantage. That's the whole reason to invest in anything. People want leverage to secure their positions and their possessions against external risks. A society where everyone is equal is like the beginning of a Hunger Games: a deadly rush to either grab a weapon or take cover.
• atoav 4y ago
  This is one of the most unnecessary aspects of IT in my opinion. I get that there are some things that require so much foundation that explaining them in technical detail cannot be done, but there are too many people in our profession that get a kick out of making things look needlessly hard, when sometimes they can be explained in a sentence so you grok the idea behind it. Maybe it is also a nerd thing, but I know people who will explain you some minor aspect of the thing in excruciating detail, but totally fail to give you the big idea of what this thing even does, solves, is there for etc. It is the kind of explaination that only makes sense when you are on the same level on that topic as them. This always makes me angry. I can remember how hard it was to grasp concepts and conventions I use blindly nowadays. But back then I was not stupid, there just was a heap of things no documentation or tutorial would explain, because it would just be assumed. Remembering your own struggles is essential when creating explainations for others.
• hackernewds 4y ago
  > wonder why humans are unable to devise a society where useful change occur swiftly when necessary. It does within free markets. Universities and professiorial societies are notoriously elitist, exclusive and x-poly