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At least for me, Vim is immediately useful, and I rarely do much personalization. I agree that personalization is not an adequate measure of an editor. I don't

At least for me, Vim is immediately useful, and I rarely do much personalization. I agree that personalization is not an adequate measure of an editor. I don't agree that the problem with IDEs has anything to do with personalization. At least for me, it boils down to wanting an editor for text, rather than some specific programming language or environment. Traditional IDEs have been very "project" focused which isn't useful if you're editing an email or writing a poem or munging some logs. > imagine how little carpentry would ever get done if every hammer, drill, and tablesaw needed to be personalized. This is somewhat ironic to me not because of personalization, but because in traditional carpentry (i.e. a master carpenter) it is pretty common to make your own tools. That's kind of the beauty of woodworking and especially hand tools: your tools usually have a lot of wood parts. If they don't, they usually end up with a lot of wood parts anyways.

mathisfun123 3y ago
> a master carpenter master carpenters produce artisanal works. those works are valued for the craftsmanship itself rather than the utility. so it makes perfect sense that master carpenters would be incentivized to put thought and care into their tools. me? i'm just a tradesman/laborer. okay not really but there's still no such thing as "artisanal software", at least for sure where the code itself has intrinsic value (instead of it generating value). anyway if i ever hit it big, make it to master software developer, and have enough freedom/time that i can afford to spend it on things like personalization, maybe then i will. > This is somewhat ironic to me double irony: i'm a compiler engineer and i chose to work in compilers in order to be able to have more control over what my progams did. but i still don't have time (or care) to personalize my IDE (or vim).
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Ever try to cut wood with a dull blade? I really don't recommend it. Even a novice carpenter will benefit from taking care of his tools. Admittedly it's more important for carpenters because blunt tools can get you injured. Excepting RSI issues, the worst that will happen with a suboptimal text editor is very marginal inefficiency (typing probably isn't the bottleneck anyway.)

mathisfun123 3y ago

> a master carpenter master carpenters produce artisanal works. those works are valued for the craftsmanship itself rather than the utility. so it makes perfect sense that master carpenters would be incentivized to put thought and care into their tools. me? i'm just a tradesman/laborer. okay not really but there's still no such thing as "artisanal software", at least for sure where the code itself has intrinsic value (instead of it generating value). anyway if i ever hit it big, make it to master software developer, and have enough freedom/time that i can afford to spend it on things like personalization, maybe then i will. > This is somewhat ironic to me double irony: i'm a compiler engineer and i chose to work in compilers in order to be able to have more control over what my progams did. but i still don't have time (or care) to personalize my IDE (or vim).

mcpackieh 3y ago
Ever try to cut wood with a dull blade? I really don't recommend it. Even a novice carpenter will benefit from taking care of his tools. Admittedly it's more important for carpenters because blunt tools can get you injured. Excepting RSI issues, the worst that will happen with a suboptimal text editor is very marginal inefficiency (typing probably isn't the bottleneck anyway.)