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Comment by __jal

This was how Unix was presented to me when I was first introduced to me. I was told it was like industrial machinery - designed for those who know how to use it, efficient, dangerous if you aren't careful.

Which is exactly what a good tool should be.

When IDEs (the kind that comes as a GUI'ed bundle of things thought to be the most appropriate for the purpose by committee of someones, somewhere) started becoming popular, I didn't get it, at all. Put aside tool tips (which annoy me far more than is rational); it seemed to me that the idea was to build a toy model workshop on the work bench of a fully outfitted workshop. Why would anyone want to use that? Why bother in the first place?

I mean, I do get it. And who knows, maybe if I used one of those long enough to break muscle memory and the conceptual assumptions that don't map, I'd change my mind. But so far, vi + shell + standard utilities + what I build have served me just fine, and if for some reason I were to need "more power", whatever that means, I'd probably move to emacs.

And I still maintain that tool tips/balloon help/obscuring the very thing you're pointing at is a stupidly rude anti-pattern. Even worse is not making it possible to turn off.

parent __jal 10 years ago

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