I no longer fall into deep pits of yak shaving, but I'm not sure I agree with the opposite extreme either ("use the absolute vanilla defaults"). But I would ex

I no longer fall into deep pits of yak shaving, but I'm not sure I agree with the opposite extreme either ("use the absolute vanilla defaults"). But I would expect that there's a natural progression (sort of like the many "evolution of a <language> programmer" posts[1]). You start using these programmer's tools, and at first you struggle to do basic things with default settings. Then, later, you learn that everything can be configured. You spend days (weeks? months?) getting very little real work done, but configuring everything. Then, later again, you calm down, find a set of reasonable and productive configurations, automate getting them onto new machines when necessary and go back to work. [1]: Example for Python: https://gist.github.com/289467 https://gist.github.com/289467.