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Comment by 4ad | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that this class of articles has such an appeal to Hacker News readers.

If this were an article about hammers, and how good they are for driving nails, people wouldn't care. If this were an article about saws, and how they are for cutting wood, people wouldn't care.

To me, the article is exactly like the examples above. Take some widely used tool and say what it does. It's common knowledge and I don't care that you use a particular tool exactly the way it's advertised.

Now if this were an article about using hammers for something they were not designed for, of about using saws in creative ways, that might be interesting. It might also be interesting to talk about what you build and how common tools made a difference for your product.

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Woodworking magazines are full of articles about tools and how they're used. The most interesting pieces are invariably about how the tool changes the user - how Japanese saws change your mental approach to jobholding, or how routers tend to displace other tools and skills.

At a sufficiently high level, any discussion of craft inevitably becomes a matter of philosophy. The tools in a shop tell you about how a woodworker relates to wood; His attitudes shape his tool choices and his tools shape his attitudes.

Yep. I spent a weekend with a group of sculptors once, and they were debating the merits of particular drills just as eagerly as we discuss editors. Tools matter when you use them the whole day, every day.

Though still it should be noted that most of programming is thinking, not typing ;-)

I imagine that your sculpting friends would also note that most of sculpting is thinking, not physichally shaping a medium.

Why do you think programming would be different?

Actually given the image you want to sculpt the rest of the work is 'knocking away the parts that don't belong'. This often takes most of the time in the overall process. There is also the matter of mounting the piece. This can take from zero (for free standing pieces) time to significant amount of time depending on the problem(s) involved. Overall I'd have to say that after 30+ years, doing the work takes more time than thinking up the idea. It's hard to be exact since it depends on hard to quantify things like how you come up with your ideas---many of mine were dreamed up while doing things like kiln watch (someone has to be around when you are burning the wax out of molds for casting bronze). Or when you are just sitting around with other sculptors and bullshitting. Something gets said that leads to an idea etc. Given the way the mind works, it would be hard to say that the thinking process starts 'NOW' and ends 'HERE' leading to time to pick up carving tool etc. Since I long ago came from the art department side of campus, I highly recommend taking some of these courses not just to get those non-major credits, but to give yourself other boxes to think in when you have to think outside the box. Must stop now, beginning to babble :)

Are you a professional sculptor?

This analogy is exact. At the beginning levels people argue about power tools versus hand tools; shooting board vs. chopsaw, japanese plane vs. iron. Professionals have their tools that work, are interested in new tools insofar as they can improve results or productivity, but don't engage in recreational arguments.

Masters of the craft have no dogma about tools and are always exploring, but also have strong opinions. They will rarely broach the topic but if someone is interested will talk for hours about their favourite tools. Their emphasis is on how the various tools change the process of work, not on how they change the work itself - the piece will be what they want it to be regardless of the tool. It's the worker-tool interface that's important at this level.

The simple tool analogy is flawed, I think. A hammer, saw, or screwdriver tend to do one, maybe two (in the case of a case) things well. A programmer's editor will often need to do lots of thing well (or, at least a few, specialized things well).

That said...

I agree. Of course, the opposite side of the coin is that sometimes, people who don't use the tool in question need to find a nice, concise overview of why this tool is really swell, rather than "anti-patterns in tool x." So, I can live with a few "my_editor_of_choice is awesome because" articles. It's easy enough to not click on a link.

I think more complicated machinery fits the analogy better. Photography, for example. For many people a simple point & shoot camera is good enough (e.g., notepad). They start quickly, they are cheap, and they get the job done, but push the boundaries and you'll wish you had more. For others who want more power, there are digital slr cameras with a wealth of features available (e.g., VS/Eclipse). Then there are those who insist that their 1970s vintage film camera will always outperform the latest technology (e.g., Emacs/Vim).

Another analogy that I thought of was heavy machinery (they are complicated machines that are designed for complicated tasks), but I have no idea if there are construction workers that discuss the merits of Japanese vs American earth mover design or think the controls from some 1980s era Russian dump truck can never be matched.

To me, the article is exactly like the examples above.

No, it's not.

I have been a casual user of emacs, in the past. It did not seem like such a big deal to me: as a text editor it seemed better than average, but the arcane commands needed to get anything done seemed non-sensical.

Then, reading an article like the one linked, I learned about org-mode. Which was the hook that got me into using emacs for 90% of my texting needs.

Hammers do one thing, really well, but it's as if, after a lifetime of using a hammer to drive nails I talked to my neighbor and found out they have dozens of other uses.

Here is an article about drills and how they are used for drilling holes:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/12/hand-powered-drilling...

Now that we've gone this far, may as well link to this classic from "In the beginning was the command line":

http://steve-parker.org/articles/others/stephenson/holehawg....

> people wouldn't care

But which people? I'm sure those who use hammers every day care about how they are used and which ones are the best.

I love my estwing hammer. I don't want anyone to take it from my toolbox. But I don't care what hammer you use; so long as you know how to use it and are happy with it.

But someone willing to spend $260 on a stiletto probably cares about what hammer you use.

"Why I still use a rock"

At school, I’m known as the Rock guy; when people have questions about using a Rock and hitting things a certain way, they often come and ask me. Sometimes, some people ask me why use a Rock to hit a nail? Isn't it a really an ancient way of doing things and wouldn't a hammer be much better?

I guess this has to be a parody, and yet if this article actually existed I would click on it immediately.

Learning how other people use tools is what technology is all about. Otherwise you will make dangerous assumptions, like "of course my cutting tool is sharp; the reason it's cutting so slowly is that hand-powered cutting tools are always slow." Or "obviously space aliens made this artifact, because what society could have built such a nifty thing using nothing but rocks?"

People like to talk about the tools and techniques they use regularly.

Hackers and "people" might not be interested in hammers, but I can attest that if you get a group of blacksmiths together in a pub, they will spend entire evenings talking about different kinds of hammers, techniques for striking, etc.

> If this were an article about hammers, and how good they are for driving nails, people wouldn't care.

If most people bought and used expensive, complicated hydraulic machinery to drive nails -- then I think people would care about such an article.

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