What Are Some Stupid Things That Smart People Do? | Hacker News Reader

What Are Some Stupid Things That Smart People Do?

quora.com

15 pointsmonksy15 comments

"take pride in using programming languages and text editors that have been designed by programmers, not updated since the 1970s, and never touched by anyone with a modicum of design sense."

Sounds like this was written by a web developer.

Programming in a text editor designed by a programmer for programming? Sounds...logical?

Using an editor designed by programmers means you're most likely not getting a well-designed interface.

Developers are notorious for not knowing much (if anything) about good UI design.

Well, yeah, this pretty much describes vim. No cues are told how to save, exit, search, or insert.

But, it's functional, and once you learn the functions, it's quicker than using a mouse and many other tools.

I think vim has the best designed interface. This is reason why so many other editors always have a vim mode. Remember, imitation is the best form of flattery.

> What Are Some Stupid Things That Smart People Do? (quora.com)

The "stupid things" list should certainly include visiting quora.com, a tar-pit masquerading as a website.

Note: This has been edited to change it from the Forbes link to the raw Quora post. The post I was attempting to highlight was by "Lee Semel"

Lee's answer[0] is a good one, and worth a look, but there are other good answers there as well. Andrea Martin's answer[1] just below Lee's is especially interesting because it takes an entirely different viewpoint to the question than the typical "intellectual biases" or "networking/superficial social skills" type of answers:

"Fail to develop and maintain mutual support systems among mature, benevolent, competent people. Without a good support system, anyone can begin to slide down a slippery slope when they encounter hardship, miscalculate something major, or fall victim to the misdeeds of others."

Go read the whole thing. It's worth it.

[0] Permalink to Lee's answer: http://www.quora.com/Human-Behavior/What-are-some-stupid-thi...

[1] Permalink to Andrea's answer: http://www.quora.com/Human-Behavior/What-are-some-stupid-thi...

I'll have to take a look at that as well.

Postfix those URLs with ?share=1 so us without Quora accounts see something useful.

[0] http://www.quora.com/Human-Behavior/What-are-some-stupid-thi...

[1] http://www.quora.com/Human-Behavior/What-are-some-stupid-thi...

Thanks for that. I can't edit my post anymore, so I can't fix it above.

Quora's really aggressive about getting people to sign up. I had to log in with a dummy account just to get the permalinks in the first place.

Is this on quora or forbes ?

Its on Forbes sourced by Quara ... I'm not sure if Forbes has taken over Quara or if it's just syndicating that post.

Quara has been syndicating their content to several outlets. I believe Slate has a number of questions from Quara on their site as well.

For those visiting now: this submission used to point to a Forbes repost of Lee Semel's answer on the Quora page. Looks like the mods changed it.

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