Open Source and Constraints

The author writes: More and more, I've found that the simpler the tool is, the more effective it is as a channel of creativity.

Reitz argues that simpler camera lenses force him to focus on the craft of photography. This argument comes back around in the "IDE vs text editor" dust ups that occur periodically. The simpler tool (for some definition of "simpler", neither Emacs nor vim seems particularly simple to me, but then neither does Wordpad or nano) forces you to concentrate on the craft of coding, rather than manipulation of all the metaphorically shiny GUI objects.