Blog -- Page 5

No One Knows How to Do Anything Anymore

Originally posted 2015-09-15/Modified 2016-01-06

Do you think you know how to use piece of software X? No you don't. You've just learned enough of the facade of X that you can often get by without having to look for directions.

Much of modern software development (and life in general, for that matter), is crawling through the vast trove of information available on the internet to find a pre-made solution to a problem at hand. My observation, at least, is that programmers rarely take (or have) time to develop a thorough understanding of a problem or tool. Rather, we rush through assignments and tickets, pasting together components until it seems like we have what we need.

Forget algorithms and datastructures, the most important skill for a modern programmer to have is – google skills.


The three Es of Text-editing

Originally posted: 2015-09-15. Modified: 2016-12-21.

1 Efficiency

You want to be able to perform editing tasks quickly and use an optimized workflow.

2 Ergonomics

You want to minimize strain on your wrists and hands, primarily by conserving movement.

3 Extensibility

Since you are a programmer, you want to be able to program and customize your environment to meet needs as they arise. Add and remove features to optimize your workflow.

Each of these features is in some way linked to the other two, but at the same time each of these features is an independent goal to achieve.

[CB 8/3/2015] I plan to post some articles about how I think these goals can be achieved quite well with Emacs+Evil soon. Note that emacs additionally supports variable-width text, which appears to increase reading efficiency by ~15%.


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