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> “You should use a suboptimal solution to cater for unknown future requirements” is a terrible argument Not exactly the same, but over the years I've heard pe

by saghm 4y ago

> “You should use a suboptimal solution to cater for unknown future requirements” is a terrible argument Not exactly the same, but over the years I've heard people argue against having super customized shell configurations (e.g. completions, prompts, highlighting) because they won't be available if you have to use a different environment (e.g. sshing into a temporary cloud server to debug something failing in CI). I don't pretend that other people will value tradeoffs the same as me, but it's a mindset I can't really imagine ever having. I'd rather be happy most of the time even if I know I'm going to be unhappy for short periods occasionally in the future, and I don't really think the slight efficiency gain in the uncommon case due to being used to not having nice features is going to outweigh the larger efficiency gain for the much more common case. At the risk of straying entirely off-topic, I've seen this in non-professional contexts at times as well; I recently had a friend in an online game mention that he doesn't like to utilize a convenience feature that happens for a couple weeks each year as part of a special even because he would miss it too much the rest of the time. While I don't think the tradeoff is quite as obvious to me for this sort of thing, I feel like occasionally having a fun temporary addition is worth it just for the change of pace, and I'm generally able to adapt to the loss of a minor convenience relatively quickly after losing it. It seems sort of like a question of "maximizing peak happiness" versus "minimizing peak unhappiness" or even "maximizing average happiness"; I like having something to get excited about every now and then even if it leads to feeling blase about things for a bit later because I get bored if things stay the same for too long.

meatmanek 4y ago
As an analogy to your shell customization thing: I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak a long time ago, a few years after learning to touch type. Does it make me more efficient on my own computer? Probably slightly -- Dvorak really is a well-designed keyboard layout, but it's impossible to know whether my WPM is any higher than it would've been on QWERTY. However, I make way more mistakes and type way more slowly whenever I sit down at a QWERTY keyboard. I had to re-learn how to touchtype QWERTY after switching to Dvorak, and my skill never got back to the same level. It also leads to extra inconvenience every time I lend my computer to someone else, install a new OS, etc. I think this means my average typing speed (weighted average of the time spent at Dvorak keyboards + QWERTY keyboards) is probably flat or possibly lower than if I had just stuck with QWERTY. When combined with all the effort I spent learning Dvorak, re-learning QWERTY, and making many mistakes in the early years, I think my lifetime productivity is probably even lower. I don't recommend that people switch, even if I think Dvorak really is a better layout.

by saghm 4y ago

meatmanek 4y ago

As an analogy to your shell customization thing: I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak a long time ago, a few years after learning to touch type. Does it make me more efficient on my own computer? Probably slightly -- Dvorak really is a well-designed keyboard layout, but it's impossible to know whether my WPM is any higher than it would've been on QWERTY. However, I make way more mistakes and type way more slowly whenever I sit down at a QWERTY keyboard. I had to re-learn how to touchtype QWERTY after switching to Dvorak, and my skill never got back to the same level. It also leads to extra inconvenience every time I lend my computer to someone else, install a new OS, etc. I think this means my average typing speed (weighted average of the time spent at Dvorak keyboards + QWERTY keyboards) is probably flat or possibly lower than if I had just stuck with QWERTY. When combined with all the effort I spent learning Dvorak, re-learning QWERTY, and making many mistakes in the early years, I think my lifetime productivity is probably even lower. I don't recommend that people switch, even if I think Dvorak really is a better layout.