Jason Fried's setup | Hacker News Reader

Jason Fried's setup

jason.fried.usesthis.com

99 pointsthere83 comments

Aside from the fact that this guy has produced some decent software, I can't believe that hardware/software configurations of random people is interesting discussion matter.

People think that if they emulate successful people they will be more successful themselves. So it's about a form of fashion.

'X uses brand Y hardware, that must be a factor in his success, so if I buy brand Y as well I'll stand a better chance at success'

Never mind that 'X' would probably make a go of it given nothing but a teletype and the people that emulate 'X' couldn't make good use of a cluster with 50 nodes and a wall sized display.

It's not the hardware that matters, it's the guys & girls using it that make the difference.

>People think that if they emulate successful people they will be more successful themselves. So it's about a form of fashion.

That's true and there's really nothing wrong with that. Being a hobby guitarist I feel this is very similar to many guitarists and other musicians. A guitarist doesn't want a guitar that's just nice sounding and good quality, it has to look good. If you feel your instrument has a certain "mojo" it can help you get in an inspired mood more easily. If you have instrument you don't like you can't perform at your best. A jazz guitarist might not be happy about playing a guitar that looks like it's made for heavy metal no matter what it sounds like.

Sometimes when you're passionate about something, tools are not just tools. No one needs Armani suit to protect themselves from cold, no one needs a ferrari to get from one place to another and no one needs a Gibson Les Paul to play guitar.

If someone can be more productive because working on a Macbook Pro makes them feel more like a Rock Star Developer than working on a PC with Windows XP, I don't see anything wrong with that.

I like learning about tools other people use because sometimes someone'll say, "I really love this tool", and I'll give it a try and, hey, what do you know? I love the tool too.

Me too. And sometimes, if a lot of smart people are using a particular tool, there's a reason for it.

An example: Kevin Kelly runs a blog called "Cool Tools" that is about, as the name implies, tools people use that are unusually good at what they do. When I read this: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004652.php , I immediately bought one, loved it, and wrote this post: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/04/highly-recommended-the-best-b... .

I agree with the DP -- some of this stuff is fashion -- but not all of it is.

I'm sorry, but I've found out about a couple of devices I had no knowledge of before on Wolfram's. (anybot)

So it's clearly a knowledge sharing plus.

It happens to be based around pseudo-famous people, but this makes it more readable than just a sample of coders with variances

I'm a little bit curious about the setup that really productive developers (Linus Torvalds, for instance) use - if someone goes to find out, fine by me. I don't think Jason Fried is really a developer though - or is he?

Jason says in the article that he doesn't program.

Also, Linus doesn't really code anymore; he just types `git merge` until his fingers fall off. (or at least that's my understanding, I'm nowhere near being on the kernel team)

> Also, Linus doesn't really code anymore; he just types `git merge` until his fingers fall off. (or at least that's my understanding, I'm nowhere near being on the kernel team)

Yeah, that's pretty accurate: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...

There are some good articles on there - Andrew "bunnie" Huang[1] shows us how he can be handed a next-day plane ticket and not miss any work time, Jason Rohrer develops games on a seven-year-old laptop[2], Mark Pilgrim explains haw his writing setup isn't actually that important[3].

However, about half of the interviews on there are some variation on "Apple laptop, Apple monitor, standard Apple suite of applications + some others", which does wear thin after a while.

[1] http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/

[2] http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/

[3] http://mark.pilgrim.usesthis.com/

>which does wear thin after a while.

Why would successful people tending to choose a certain brand "wear thin"? What should they be using?

You misunderstand - I don't mind what combination of tools people use to get work done, as long as they're happy with it. But on a site that tries to describe interesting setups, it eventually stops being so interesting.

Aha. Perhaps someone should make a site documenting exotic setups of famous tech people. I know of one Emacs user who has a foot peddle for the control key or something.

Something like so: http://www.xkeys.com/xkeys/xkfoot.php ?

I seem to remember one of my friends saying that someone at their work uses a foot peddle for Esc (as a vim user).

> Shure SE530s keeps everyone out of my head [snip]

When I gave up headphones, I realized how much noise I subscribed to. I found it's not the keeping everyone out of your head inasmuch as it is the general quiet with the occasional person and it feels more disarming than expected noise (something piped through buds).

In a couple short months without headphones compared to years with, I prefer the quiet with interruption to constant stimulation.

Have you tried noise-cancelling headphones? I use the Sennheiser PXC-350's whenever I am not working at home, you can get the benefits of reduced ambient noise without having any music on (though I mostly do). It's NOT complete sound-proofing, but much nicer than hearing everything that is happening around you.

Here is the comparison that convinced me (the Sennheisers are at the end): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQdbcDTiIas

I think you misunderstood the OP.

+1 for the noise-cancelling headphones. The killer-feauture for me, however, is on airplanes. They will filter out most of the ambient noise, but more interestingly, they allow you to listen to music/movies/whatever without cranking the volume to 11, which in itself is excruciating.

If you fly just somewhat frequently, get a set of PXC-350s. (or something similar, but I haven't found anything else in the same or lower price range with decent reviews).

I'm genuinely curious... Are $400 in-ear headphones really that much better than, let's say, $100 models?

I am not sure about this specific model, but a lot of the high end ones are custom molded to fit your ear canal. It's a luxury, obviously, but if you are using them a lot and you can afford it, I think it's worth it. The ones I have double quite well as earplugs when I don't listen to music, and work far better than any specifically designed noise canceling headphones I've tried.

Ultimate Ears (now a subsidiary of Logitech) is pretty well known for their custom in-ear monitors. Prices go as low as $399, not ludicrously expensive. I've never used them personally, but others seem to be pretty well chuffed by them.

http://ultimateears.com/en-us/products/custom

Depends. I can't hear the difference between $100 and $400 headphones in most cases. I have a $99 pair of Apple in-ear headphones and they work great.

I like to keep my music library fairly small, so everything's encoded at 160 or 192kbps mp3. Fancy headphones only help if you're encoding much higher or using FLAC/ALAC.

I can tell the difference between 192 cbr and v0 vbr (or 320 cbr) on my $20 Sennheisers. Does it really not bother you?

If I play them side by side I can hear the difference, but listening to the lower quality version doesn't bother me.

I had a pair of Shures that I paid over $200 for. Every other earbud I've tried has been terrible. They're tinny, they don't fit right, and you have to blast them to get over moderate ambient noise. I worked in a fairly noisy office when I had the Shures, and I could turn the music down to one click over 0 and still hear nothing but music. The sound quality was also a lot better than just about anything else I've used (save for my $290 pair of over-ear headphones). I ended up losing them (or they were stolen, not sure) and just never replaced them. I mostly work from home now, and no one here is going to care if I turn up the speakers connected to my desktop.

Were they $300 better, or even $50 or $100 better? That depends on what your priorities are. Me, I've spent a lot of time and money collecting a high-quality music library, and I prefer to hear it through headphones that are transparent and don't lose detail. Your priorities might be completely different.

Usually but it depends on a few variables and it's not always worth it.

Because you're not used to it, high end equipment doesn't sound amazing in comparison at first - just oddly different. (At least not in a $400 to $100 comparison - the biggest difference is going from $10 to $100.) Once you're acclimatized, though, it's really hard to go back until your hearing naturally degrades and you're stuck buying high end gear.

So the rational approach is to never buy high end headphones or earphones at all and instead aim for the highest quality stuff under around $150. It'll get you 90% of the way there and stop you becoming an audio freak chasing an expensive pipedream. Almost no-one will give this advice, though, since audiophiles want to rationalize their purchases and reviewers or stores want you to buy their crap.

> Almost no-one will give this advice

Which makes it quite difficult to find good equipment which is 90% there. What about speakers/home cinema. Any recommendations?

There's no gospel. Get what you think sounds nice.(1)

Go to a real hifi shop, where they actually demo the stuff for you in living room-like conditions (carpet, not warehouse ceiling etc., and no 25 TVs blaring MTV across the aisle), and listen to the difference between, say, $80 speakers and $500 ones, then try to figure out where your ability to hear the difference levels off, and get something in that range.

Bring a CD of the kind of music you enjoy. "Thunderstruck" is wonderful for demoing bass, but if you're into indie-fragile-weeping-dude, it's not what you want to base your purchase decision on.

If a place won't let your switch between different speaker/amp combinations on your time using your own music, you're not buying from them.

(1: Except one thing: cables. Don't get the biodynamic green tea infused ripoff stuff, but the ones that come with your stereo (even good ones) are most likely absolutely hideous. If you already have a setup, and use bad cables, spending a bit of money on decent cables is the best investment you can do.)

Thanks for the advice. But on cables..

If it's a digital signal going over the cables, won't it either work or not work? Or are we talking analogue here?

The only thing to look for in digital cables is build quality, so that the cables last, don't break, and you get your money's worth. I've got these quality ethernet cables I bought 15 years ago that I still use. They don't have to be expensive either. Pretty much anything you get from monoprice.com fits the bill.

I was referring to analog cables.. but yeah, if you're buying new, getting an end-to-end digital setup is entirely feasible. Still, you probably want a single minijack-to-phono for plugging in an iPod.

Definitely agree with going from $10 to $100. I bought a pair of Grado SR60 headphones a few years ago for ~$65, and they were by far the best headphones I have ever owned. I heard things on CDs that I never noticed before.

Strong agree on the performance curve for earbuds too. If you can buy it at Best Buy for under $100, your money is probably better spent with something nicer online.

In high-end speakers (hi-fi, whatever you want to call it) there are always sleeper brands that even the audiophiles will say offer an 80% experience for under 50% of the price... I remember (before several buyouts) NHT bookcase speakers being one of those. It's probably the same in headphones.

Please, for the love of God, take my word for this: it's also very much true of cars.

Grado SR60/SR80 are extremely cheaply built, mine had plastic pieces come off and one of the ear pieces sometimes snaps off from the head band. Really unacceptable. On top of that low frequency response is less than ideal. Old similarly priced Panasonics that I use as heavily are still in one piece and work reliably. I'm using Sennheisers now, I'm not sure how it's going to hold on in long term, but for now it seems that they have higher build quality than Grados.

You can grab those shures for just above $200 on eBay. I got them but if I could go back in time I would have gotten something cheaper, or a headphone instead.

If you're over 35 don't bother, your ears will have deteriorated too much due to aging. Under that it might be worth it, the younger you are the better your ears. Try them before you buy them, and try a bunch of them in different price ranges it's not pocket change.

I've experimented with earphones from £5's worth all the way up to £230 odd for Ultimate Ears 10vi triple fi pros (I've also tried Shure SE530's and feel the triple fi's beat 'em).

The difference between the triple fi's and basically any other earphone is actually pretty astounding. The main difference is clarity; though it's a cliche, it really is a case of hearing individual instruments, etc. (though you need high bitrate for this obviously).

It is, however, an extremely expensive hobby (and you can't go back). Another great thing about the triple fi's is that you can replace the cable. Since the cable is usually the failure point of any set of earphones this actually makes it quite economical compared to, say, £50 earphones you need to replace far more often.

Definitely, I've been through a few different ones from $50-$400 and finally settled on the Klipsch X10s. You can barely tell you're wearing them.

you can't find a sound isolating IEM for $100. usually it starts at $200+ there's a good review in this forum: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/478568/multi-iem-review-...

I've spent roughly half that on single pairs of Shure headphones, and while I like the sound quality, I recommend avoiding them, because the cables are of very low quality. Jason probably doesn't wear his headphones out in the Chicago winters, but I do, and every pair of Shure's I've bought (I think I'm up to 4) has ended up with frayed cables or cable/driver connections.

Shure has an amazing replacement policy (it's basically no-questions-asked) and I like the company and the user experience, but losing a pair of $200 headphones every 6-9 months isn't acceptable.

I've been using the Ultimate Buds (what a terrible name [for headphones]) versions of FutureSonics FS-1's and Etymotics; in both cases, UB swaps out the OEM cable with Apple's vastly superior version, which has the added benefit of working as a handsfree with my iPhone. I highly recommend these.

It's not hard to see why Shure's high-end pairs are of higher quality than the low-end pairs; the 530's have more drivers than the 115's.

I live in California and had the same fraying cable problem with three pairs of Shures, so it's not the cold winters that cause it. As amazing as their sound quality and replacement policy are, I gave up and switched to a Chinese knockoff that had good reviews.

I'm considering a pair of Woodees next though:

http://www.woodees.net/

I also have cable problems - I've found that my pair of V-Moda headphones have lasted longest.

One thing usethis.com has taught us is that MBP is the computer for startups.

Trendy ones, at least:-)

To be honest, I expected more people to be using Ubuntu or some other distro.

Pretty much what I use - a 15" Macbook and headphones, but I WISH I'd bought the matte hi-res screen. Oh, I guess he doesn't have an Ubuntu desktop, though. His loss.

I actually wear hearing protection ear muffs, though - http://www.amazon.com/Peltor-H9A-Optime-Over-Earmuffs/dp/B00...

Now THAT is luxury. Okay, so some people think I'm weird, but I really don't like background noise.

They're really awesome for hotels, too. Noisy air conditioner? Sex next door? People clunking the doors down the hall? Who cares! I can't even hear it! Oh man, I shouldn't have even looked at that - now I see they have the deluxe 105 model....

> Now I just use the laptop screen. One screen all the time. I also like the smaller screen because it forces me to make better use of the space. I found myself getting mess on a 30".

Last year I bought the 13" MBP and a 22" LCD, but with the new higher-res screens on 15" MBPs, I think this is the way to go. Same setup wether you're at the office or in a coffee shop. Next time I upgrade I'll definitely get rid of the external screen.

The new 15" 1680x1050 matte screen looks really gorgeous but at 129 PPI I fear the text of most web sites could be too tiny. And I hate to zoom web pages!

In fact the iMacs 21/27 have a 102/109 PPI resolution, but then you keep the display of a desktop computer at a higher distance compared to the screen of a notebook, so the higher PPI on the MBP HR could be appropriate.

Text rendering on OS X is resolution-independent. Even Win7 doesn't have (much) trouble scaling up to my 1920x1200 15.4" laptop screen, and that's about 200 DPI. And OS X definitely has better scaling.

Other than feeling the need to list all of 37signals products, why would he use Ta-da List when Basecamp and Backpack both have to-do lists as well?

Google juice.

Probably personal tasks vs work/project tasks.

I'm wondering why a non-programmer uses Git.

Maybe he uses it for his designs or his writing.

Writing copy in the apps, updating and pushing new copy.

I use Git to archive blog posts and other documents. Likely the same for him

Basic HTML/CSS and marketing copy.

Commiting the CSS and HTML for all his webapps.

i switched from this: http://imgur.com/QBQNt.jpg

to this: http://imgur.com/No4os.jpg

and them to this: http://imgur.com/JVqRa.jpg

"Luckily, we're in the computer business, not the Formula One business."

Tell that to DHH: http://www.mibz.com/21876-one-and-only-pagani-zonda-hh-owner...

Bizarre. Some software aside, Jason Fried's setup is very similar to mine.

Most setups on usesthis.com are similar to most HNer's setups - a MacBook Pro (some with a cinema display attached).

Am I the only person with a dual screen Win7 desktop paired with an Ubuntu server?

Dual screen older iMac plus an ubuntu server (msi wind + ssd)

My most common work programming scenario: editing files on our Debian build server via sshfs in emacs running in a screen session on my dual-monitor Ubuntu desktop which I log into using Putty on my XP laptop.

I imagine you're in the minority, running Windows as a developer in this community. A lot of the software and tools just don't play as nicely with something that isn't as tightly integrated with a shell.

Currently I'm running a Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit on my desktop with two monitors (24" and 19"), and 10.04 64-bit on my laptop (mid-2008 model MBP with 8GB RAM). For a server I typically use my desktop for prototyping things for myself, and use a Linode server (again, running Ubuntu 10.04, but Server edition, rather than Desktop) to host things I want more reliable, consistent access to (blog, etc). Having consistency across my setup is pretty nice for making sure everything interacts well, both on my development machine and production instances.

I also run Ubuntu on my dual monitor lab machine. I'm an undergraduate student, but I do security research for the university part time with one of the professors.

Same here. I even own a Macbook Pro but just can't use it as my main because of all the awful UI quirks. Maybe it's the 15 years of Windows conditioning, and I'm not trying to start a flamewar but come on, if I have a window in the far right of my display I'm supposed to go all the way to the top left to click on a menu item? Why doesn't maximizing actually maximize? Do I need function, control, alt, option, and command keys? Where are the Page Up, Page Down, Home, or End keys? Why is Alt-Tab retarded?

Argh! I could go on but I'll just go move files around my sanely organized file browser for a little while to calm down.

You shouldn't let ignorance get you so angry. Especially when it's so easy to fix (first hit on google): http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343

I didn't see page up/down in there, so: fn+up/down

I should hope not! Windows 7 is the only OS that can readily handle recent (within the last year) graphics cards, both for gaming and programming (when you can offset some calculations to the GPU, things become fast). Whenever I try Linux, getting all the hardware working is fiddly, and the hardware in Apple computers is about a year behind everywhere else.

I still run a virtualised Linux environment, though, because there are some things (such as Git integration in Emacs) that I couldn't get working quite right. It works oddly well overall. I also have four monitors, 'cause I'm weird.

[Edit: I originally wrote "modern" graphics cards, which is a term so variable it doesn't have a meaning.]

I like this guy: http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/

Uses shitty hand-me-down hardware yet still productive.

Yeah, I've suspected that the most important piece of hardware (and software) is the one between your ears.

Macbooks, $400 headphones... Bah!

Yeah, I'd think so too, in general, but having a laptop with a good sized screen, quality keyboard and large, responsive touchpad sets my mind at ease and really lets me get work done.

The MacBook Pro touchpad is the only one I've ever used that doesn't leave me wanting to plug in an external mouse.

Take any sport you can think of where equipment is involved. Without their equipment the top athletes of that sport will be vastly better than most people. But they use the very best equipment they can to squeeze out every last drop of performance.

I suspect that many top athletes can get whatever equipment they want for free under the guise of "endorsements". Tiger Woods doesn't pay for his golf clubs, if anything his golf club manufacturer pays for the right to say "Tiger Woods uses our golf clubs".[1] Michael Jordan never paid for his Air Jordans, but Nike paid him a pretty penny.

It's the same for top musicians, incidentally. If you're selling musical instruments, you're selling to people who follow music and are influenced by which instruments their favorite musicians use. So it's cost-effective to give famous musicians whatever they want in exchange for a plug or two.

[1] Bad example as of late since Tiger Woods has become unpopular and is struggling with his form.

in response to the last usesthis.com post here, i created a "setups" subreddit. if any of you have an unusual setup worth sharing, please post about it somewhere (or even just a picture) and submit it to http://reddit.com/r/setups

Enjoy that feeling. You have a similar setup to a multi millionaire who's not ignorant about tech.

It's notable how he sticks to his principles. I suspect I'd have 101 bizarre high-end computers and clusters around the place if I were wealthy, though this is probably why I'm not ;-)

That site needs a filter to only read the setups that don't include a MBP.

I think it's more the case that a lot of the interviewees don't explain how they arrived at the setup in question - they just list what they have, and that takes out the interesting bit.

If you add in some history, you can make your first vacuum cleaner worth reading about (Keita Takahashi's interview)

Would love to hear/see DHH's setup.

http://david.heinemeier.hansson.usesthis.com/

plus http://www.mibz.com/21876-one-and-only-pagani-zonda-hh-owner... !

Tangentially related (I'll use the way Jason dropped back from a dual setup to a single screen as an excuse for this):

What's the best way to get a triple monitor setup working under Ubuntu? I'd like a single desktop, and the OS to understand the monitors (ie, not treat two monitors as a single monitor like some old USB adapters did).

Recommended hardware? RTFM is fine if you give me a pointer..

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