I merely skimmed this article because I personally don't care or much about the details, but also because I completely and fully understand his pain. I've done

I merely skimmed this article because I personally don't care or much about the details, but also because I completely and fully understand his pain. I've done quite a bit of the "searching for the perfect system," including doing Emacs + Org Mode for a few years. I ditched it because I do like a lot of modern tools, and today I use a ton of little scripts and hacks, mostly around zim-wiki, but what I think the author is getting at is more-or-less the "hypercard" thing. Namely, it could and should be far easier to cobble together systems of programs as individuals that work together and that don't strongly separate "user" and "developer." (aka screw GNOME? :) )