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Comment by prospero | Hacker News Reader

Nice false dichotomy you got there.

I'm just saying... Good developers concentrate on building things. Bad developers concentrate on how much they like their tools.

You see it in everything in life though. The best way to become a fantastic cyclist say, isn't to buy the best bike out there. It's to buy a crappy cheap bike, and learn how to get the most out of it.

And then to buy a better bike.

That's a curious metaphor, because the best cyclists - the ones who win professional races - have very expensive bikes.

Seriously... if I were to pick something I'd pick music. Miles Davis on a $100 trumpet could make better music than almost anyone else with a $10k one.

That's still missing the key element. While people who are the best at something (cycling, trumpet, archery, programming) could outperform 99.999% of the population using crappy tools, that's not the point. They don't compete against 99.999% of the population. They compete against the 0.001% of the population who are their peers. And at that level of competition - when everyone is so good, and the margins of victory so slim - they use the best tools they can find.

I suppose that's true in situations where there is a significant advantage to being 1st over third or just being in those top percentiles. Splitting hairs over a topic I didn't disagree with you on from 24 hours ago, but I'd say that sorta breaks the metaphor for this particular situation. There isn't really an advantage to being the world's greatest programmer vs the world's top 1% of programmers. When you get to that level it's all gravy.

Which makes me realize I have no idea who the world's best programmer is.

Also Brian May (Queen) built his own guitar with his dad. I'm sure it's not the best guitar out there, but he learnt how to play it pretty well.

You're missing the point. They didn't learn on the best bikes.

So? We're talking about professional developers, not students.

The best way to become a fantastic cyclist is to cycle a whole heck of a lot. Buying a good or bad bike doesn't make you a good cyclist. But having a good bike can help you enjoy cycling more, and make you a better cyclist by virtue of the fact that you do it more often as a result.

Yes, and at some point in your development of competence you become hindered by bad tools. Otherwise we would not be using debuggers, high-level languages, big monitors, or anything beyond a simple text editor and console.

The danger is when you become obsessed by your tools.

For example, obsessing over the use of a semi-colon to signify the end of a statement in your language syntax.

Call me obsessed with my pinkies hitting all those semi-colons and curly braces. As if return and backspace weren't enough of a cruel joke.

In other words, why would anyone use Emacs?

"Good developers concentrate on building things. Bad developers concentrate on how much they like their tools."

serious lol

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