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Comment by lumpypua | Hacker News Reader

To counter with an alternative tool comparison: drills and impact drivers look very similar. I'd bet that most of my friends don't really know the difference. But for some situations, an impact driver is an entirely more capable tool.

If you use a drill all day, professionally, you'd be a fool not to take a serious look at an impact driver and see if it makes your life easier.

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I don’t think using different tools (which a drill and impact driver really is) is what the OP mean’t. He was more along the lines that must people don’t care whether you picked a Bosch impact driver or a DeWalt impact driver to fix their problem.

And if you explain to someone the difference, they usually get it. Even my daughter when she was five could understand why I had two similar looking things when I was working with them..

But, again - if you're the person using those tools, you care about the difference. The difference in reliability, usability, power, whatever.

That may be the point the OP was making, and if that's so, I'd counter that the point is irrelevant to make. Sure, the user of your software doesn't care what it's written in. Duh. Why should they? If they did, it'd be weird. But the people actually writing the software should care about choosing tools that fit the problem. Not because the end-user will care, but because choosing a more appropriate tool will allow them to build software that gets to market faster, and has fewer bugs and is easier to maintain.

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