Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovecg | Hacker News Reader

Steelmanning the "we must force tool usage" position: it's possible that a tool does increase productivity, but there's either a steep learning curve (productivity only improves after sustained usage) or network effects (most people must use it for anyone to benefit).

No opinion on whether or not this applies to the current moment. But maybe someone should try forcing Dvorak layout on everyone or something like that for a competitive edge!

View on HN

I once had a boss who saw me use Vim and was really impressed with how quickly I could jump around files and make precision edits. He tried getting the other devs (not many, < 5) to use Vim too but it didn't quite pan out.

I would guess that interest, passion, and motivation all play a role here. It's kind of like programming itself. If you sit people down and make them program for awhile, some will get good at it and some won't.

> I would guess that interest, passion, and motivation all play a role here.

And, to use less pointed language, people’s brains are wired differently. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another, even with similar interest, passion, and motivation.

I agree with this.

I was using emacs for a while, but when I switched to vim, something about the different modes just really meshed with how I thought about what I was doing, and I enjoyed it way more and stuck to it for a couple of decades.

I see people that I'd say are more proficient with their emacs, VS Code, etc setups than I am with my vim setup, so I don't think there's anything special about vim other than "it works for me".

I worked with a developer that copied and pasted A LOT and would keep his fingers on the old copy and paste buttons (Ctrl-Ins, etc.). I've even seen him copy and paste single letters. He's one of the most productive developers I've ever worked with.

>I've even seen him copy and paste single letters.

Hopefully not C and V..

I find this hilarious and wanted to give it more recognition than just an upvote.

I've had plenty of interest, passion and motivation during my career. But never, ever, directed at learning something like vim, even if it's going to make me more productive.

I'd rather learn almost any other of the myriad of topics related with software development that the quirks of an opinionated editor. I especially hate memorising shortcuts and commands.

Your old boss probably would have been a bit chastened if he knew said devs would then be spending their hours learning how to exit Vim instead of programming

There was a time where I'd change to a different terminal and do sudo killall -9 to get out vim.

And that time when I changed vim to a symlink to emacs on a shared login server and sat back and enjoyed the carnage. (I did change it back relatively quickly)

If learning how to exit Vim takes hours then they aren't worth keeping as employees anyway.

Yep, there is a how-to displayed when you enter vim without opening any files.

Vim's learning curve is much steeper to be honest

Coding agents seem to be in the fun paradox of "it's so easy to use, anyone can code!" and "using it productively is a deep skill, and we have to force people to use it so they learn"

But it’s both, isn’t it? It’s so easy to use, anyone without any coding experience whatsoever can produce a somewhat working prototype. It’s hard to use well, most experienced developers will end up with net negative productivity without learning what works and what doesn’t.

Programming isn’t a government desk job. The interface between programmer and company should be the output only, they can’t force a programmer to use w/e bs they think is good at the time

Can you come up with other examples of forced tool usage that retrospectively made sense?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com