4 ms·

I’m myself a writer, geek and my hobby is developing free software. I do every text/blog post in Neovim, including emails with Neomutt. I do everything in conso

by ploum 4y ago

I’m myself a writer, geek and my hobby is developing free software. I do every text/blog post in Neovim, including emails with Neomutt. I do everything in console. Using the bépo layout (which is dvorak for French). I write my books, my journal and my zettelkasten with an Azerty mechanical typewriter. I think I do really understand his philosophy…

nerpderp82 4y ago
Is it a version of the Knuth airgap? Single tasking with few distractions?
- kbenson 4y ago
  There could be many things working at once. Constraints often yield surprising benefits through innovation or forcing things to be distilled to the core important bits. In Stephenson's case, if he happens to record core info and not necessarily the full sentence he will write, which he can then finagle the right structure and prose for later, maybe that allows for better flow. If that's indeed what he's doing, it might be like writing pseudo-code and then going back and translating it into the programming language medium of choice. The benefit of writing in a journal is that it's probably easier to do on a sunny day at the beach in the sand than it would be on a laptop or tablet. Also maybe seeing old ideas crossed out on paper helps later when looking back over it to get you into the same headspace. Sometimes we over-optimize for aspect of a task (such as getting ideas down quick) in a way that's detrimental to the process itself when we step back and look at the whole.
  - ploum 4y ago
    All of that. And the simple fact I posted the previous comment is the proof I’m procrastinating my next chapter ;-)
- robbintt 4y ago
  what is the knuth airgap?
  - techdragon 4y ago
    Donald Knuth, Turing Award winner, author of the The Art of Computer Programming, original author of the TeX computer typesetting system, and many other impressive works. Is well known for not using email. https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html I suspect this is what they are talk about.

by ploum 4y ago

nerpderp82 4y ago

Is it a version of the Knuth airgap? Single tasking with few distractions?

kbenson 4y ago
There could be many things working at once. Constraints often yield surprising benefits through innovation or forcing things to be distilled to the core important bits. In Stephenson's case, if he happens to record core info and not necessarily the full sentence he will write, which he can then finagle the right structure and prose for later, maybe that allows for better flow. If that's indeed what he's doing, it might be like writing pseudo-code and then going back and translating it into the programming language medium of choice. The benefit of writing in a journal is that it's probably easier to do on a sunny day at the beach in the sand than it would be on a laptop or tablet. Also maybe seeing old ideas crossed out on paper helps later when looking back over it to get you into the same headspace. Sometimes we over-optimize for aspect of a task (such as getting ideas down quick) in a way that's detrimental to the process itself when we step back and look at the whole.
- ploum 4y ago
  All of that. And the simple fact I posted the previous comment is the proof I’m procrastinating my next chapter ;-)
robbintt 4y ago
what is the knuth airgap?
- techdragon 4y ago
  Donald Knuth, Turing Award winner, author of the The Art of Computer Programming, original author of the TeX computer typesetting system, and many other impressive works. Is well known for not using email. https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html I suspect this is what they are talk about.