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Dagdum has been harping on this concept for over a year at this point: "don't waste time talking about your tools, you can do amazing things with everything, go

by EdiX 14y ago

Dagdum has been harping on this concept for over a year at this point: "don't waste time talking about your tools, you can do amazing things with everything, go do them". It's a platitude, sometimes it's even the wrong mindset to have, tools do matter. And worse still it's starting to sound hollow given that all dagdum talks about is how you should do awesome stuff instead of talking on the Internet. How about he talks about something cool he did recently instead? I guess that doesn't get him as many page views. At least in this case it is actually correct, unlike previous entries, C++ and Perl are filling two very specific niches perfectly and their obvious shortcomings are the flip side of their strengths.

kabdib 14y ago
An ounce of passion is worth a pound of tools. You /can/ do amazing things with limited resources and crappy tools. You have to be careful about this. Using this as a justification not to have good tools ("What's wrong with you? Suffering worked great last time") is bogus logic; there's no reason not to have good tools. The other side of the coin, NOT doing something because you don't have good tools yet, is equally poisonous. - The test team that spends all its time writing test frameworks and tools, and never writing any actual tests. (How many times have I seen this?) - The engineer who spends half his time "optimizing" (finding the perfect language, defragging his hard disks six times a day, tweaking TCP settings so repository access is as fast as possible) and not writing code. - Going around and around on a class design until it's /perfect/. - Not moving on something because you lack complete understanding. It's hard to overstate the benefit of just getting in the ring and doing /something/. After 25 years of random fiddling with one side project [not going to tell you want it is] I finally just started writing some fucking code. And you know, it feels darned good. The stuff I'd been worrying about being inefficient and so forth turned out to be only a few hours of thinking and coding. It was fun. A poor craftsman blames his tools.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Productivity is productivity, just like "Power is power." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifaRhL95HUM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifaRhL95HUM http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13003072 http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13003072
- vwoolf 14y ago
  Using this as a justification not to have good tools ("What's wrong with you? Suffering worked great last time") is bogus logic; there's no reason not to have good tools. The other side of the coin, NOT doing something because you don't have good tools yet, is equally poisonous. This middle ground approach is probably best. PG writes about tools and their importance in "Beating the Averages": http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html .
- tomjen3 14y ago
  A poor craftsman blames his tools -- because one upon a time, a craftsman would make his own tools. If you give a shovel and a screwdriver, don't complain if the house I build is not up to code. If I show up with a shovel and a screw-driver, you have every right to send me away.
batista 14y ago
>It's a platitude, sometimes it's even the wrong mindset to have, tools do matter. They help, but they don't matter one iota in most cases. Whatever one is doing in Rails could be done in Django or PHP or whatever. A better tool can help, but not as much as using what you already know, using things that have programmers to hire in your area, using what has community support, etc.

by EdiX 14y ago

kabdib 14y ago

An ounce of passion is worth a pound of tools. You /can/ do amazing things with limited resources and crappy tools. You have to be careful about this. Using this as a justification not to have good tools ("What's wrong with you? Suffering worked great last time") is bogus logic; there's no reason not to have good tools. The other side of the coin, NOT doing something because you don't have good tools yet, is equally poisonous. - The test team that spends all its time writing test frameworks and tools, and never writing any actual tests. (How many times have I seen this?) - The engineer who spends half his time "optimizing" (finding the perfect language, defragging his hard disks six times a day, tweaking TCP settings so repository access is as fast as possible) and not writing code. - Going around and around on a class design until it's /perfect/. - Not moving on something because you lack complete understanding. It's hard to overstate the benefit of just getting in the ring and doing /something/. After 25 years of random fiddling with one side project [not going to tell you want it is] I finally just started writing some fucking code. And you know, it feels darned good. The stuff I'd been worrying about being inefficient and so forth turned out to be only a few hours of thinking and coding. It was fun. A poor craftsman blames his tools.

stcredzero 14y ago
Productivity is productivity, just like "Power is power." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifaRhL95HUM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifaRhL95HUM http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13003072 http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13003072
vwoolf 14y ago
Using this as a justification not to have good tools ("What's wrong with you? Suffering worked great last time") is bogus logic; there's no reason not to have good tools. The other side of the coin, NOT doing something because you don't have good tools yet, is equally poisonous. This middle ground approach is probably best. PG writes about tools and their importance in "Beating the Averages": http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html .
tomjen3 14y ago
A poor craftsman blames his tools -- because one upon a time, a craftsman would make his own tools. If you give a shovel and a screwdriver, don't complain if the house I build is not up to code. If I show up with a shovel and a screw-driver, you have every right to send me away.

batista 14y ago

>It's a platitude, sometimes it's even the wrong mindset to have, tools do matter. They help, but they don't matter one iota in most cases. Whatever one is doing in Rails could be done in Django or PHP or whatever. A better tool can help, but not as much as using what you already know, using things that have programmers to hire in your area, using what has community support, etc.