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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

My rule of thumb is: if it's free choose the most popular one, if it's paid pick the perceived second best one (usually better value for your money).

Version control system? Git (most popular)

Linux Distro? Ubuntu (most popular)

CPU? AMD (perceived second best)

Rideshare? Lyft (perceived second best)

DAW? FL Studio (perceived second best)

This system has generally worked out well for me. Note that the popular choice is just to get me started because it usually has the best troubleshooting/community resources, years later when I'm more experienced sometimes I'll switch to something less popular (for example I no longer use Ubuntu in favor of openSUSE Tumbleweed).

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Man, honestly, not too sure about this, picking the "second best" is very random and can probably affect your choices of stack/methods in the long run. Take for example the DAW part, i chose FL studio to start with for the same reason as the "best" one being pretty complicated. Unfortunately when I did switch to Ableton and saw what the industry standard was, my whole year long progress pretty much went to s*t because of how overly simplified FL is, Just an opinion.

I remember going through this and ended up learning Nuendo and Ableton. Then I realised I knew all this technical stuff without a grasp of the fundamentals. I reckon if I had, I’d have been extraordinarily more productive in FL Studio than I ever was with Ableton without it.

So, React over Vue and Vim over Emacs?

Those might not be optimal choices—or they might be—but they are very unlikely to make the difference between project success and failure. Anything you can do with Vue you can do with React, and vice versa, with a modicum more or less effort, and similarly for Vim and Emacs.

On the contrary, if you choose MooTools or YUI over React and Vue, or Notepad or Microsoft Word over Vim and Emacs, that might cause project failure.

(I prefer Emacs over Vim for programming, but it's probably easier to get started with Vim nowadays as a new user. SO has 17208 #emacs questions and 26937 #vim questions.)

There are still things that Emacs can do that Vim can't do, I think.

Sure, like run Elisp.

> React over Vue

Yes, because of market share.

> Vim over Emacs

Yes, because you won't need surgery.

Why the second best?

"usually better value for your money"

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