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The fetishization of tools is one of the things that mark a dilettante mindset.

You see it on all hobbies, e.g. when the someone sees a photograph and their first question is about what camera and optics were used. No question about composition, light, the moment, creativity... they only care for the tools.

The technique and knowledge is the important thing, not the tools. They forget the good practitioner can do a great photo with a $200 phone than they with the best Canon DSLR.

I have seen this in all hobbies I have practiced, be it musical instruments, kolinsky brushes on miniature painting, montain bikers, running apparell...

As I'm getting older I care less about editors, terminals, Linux distros... and after seeing what can be done with agentic coding tools less so.

11 comments

I have no idea why I am responding to someone who flippantly uses a phrase like "dilittante mindset", but here we go

there is definitely a tendency for noobs and amateurs in any hobby or industry to obsess over expensive gear and things that don't matter (I love the term "buyhard" for it). you're out of your mind if you think the professionals in literally any industry do not discuss the specific technical tradeoffs of tools they are using among themselves.

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

-- Pablo Picasso

Miyazaki once commented in an interview that the most important selection criteria for him when he chose his watercolours and brushes, was that they were available in his local supermarket and lasted a long time.

His art is bad

They don't discuss tradeoffs of every tool, just the ones that offer the most leverage

I don't feel like this is a fair argument because different tools help different workflows. Since there is always a continuous growth of new people learning new things, it would make sense that tools change over time. Especially in a realm that is digital, not physical.

FWIW once I found my workflow (vim + tmux) I stopped caring so much about chasing "new" tools. Now have the luxury to wait 3-5 years and see what's worth adopting, most of it isn't only because I already found a workflow that works for me; but if you're new or still finding what works best, you'll always be experimenting.

Dude we are literally talking about a single text box in a window in this case.

Yes and people feel very strongly about this text box. Some people like multiple text boxes, others just like one single text box.

Those people should focus more on not writing such absurdly bloated software instead.

Yes, and one of my favorite anecdotes like this: at one of the greatest jazz concert ever recorded, Charlie Parker played a cheap plastic saxophone because he hadn't brought his own.

https://jazzfuel.com/charlie-parker-the-plastic-saxophone-th...

It is cringe to buy niche gear and learn obscure in-group terminology because you are trying to short-cut through enjoying the hobby itself directly to enjoying the status and acceptance that non-hobbyists enjoy.

But "fake it until you make it" is part of life too and everyone wants to belong and to be taken seriously. You can't always just "do the hobby for fun" if you want to be social since anxious intermediates whose own output is still crap will gate-keep.

If you can, find hobbies that bring you joy and do them alone, free from the influence of too much right and wrong, at least in the first stages.

In the context of terminal emulators, idk, do something like learn AWK purely for personal enjoyment. You may not have the flashiest dotfiles or color schemes or whatever, but you'll be able to do arcane stuff in the terminal that will give you confidence you belong and others will be amazed by.

This is a very weird take. For people who spend their entire day in the terminal, having the right terminal is incredibly important. Like saying track athletes shouldn't spend money on running shoes if they own a pair of slippers.

I mean, it's all about what works for you, right? I use Cursor's built in emulator and Hyper.sh just because I like Cmd T to work in my terminal. But my workflow is a lot different from a lot people's. Hence, I'm not sure why there's so much debate about people's workflows in this thread. Lots of "you should care" or "you shouldn't care" about your terminal.

This isn't directed at you, of course. Just a weird observation where people are prescribing their workflows to others and telling them what they should or shouldn't care about when the only thing they know about their workflow is that they use a terminal at least once a day.

Can relate well. In my early days I used to jump around linux distros and editors and terminals too, but with time as I have converged down to actually working a tech job.. Windows 10 LTSC and VSCode (with its inbuilt terminal) have become my staples.

For me, using Linux (mostly - occasionally Haiku or some sort of *BSD) then it's VSCode if I need to do it all day, and Vim if I need to do it right now.

I wish I could get out of the habit of opening Vim in VSCode's terminal window but sometimes I'm tweaking something that's "not part of this thing" and it kind of makes sense that way.

This is not about it being a hobby, ghostty is the sanest terminal emulator currently available for MacOS where you can just install and start using it. Customising your terminal doesn't need to be your hobby anymore.

Composition, lighting and creativity are no more than tools either.

Some people fetishize tool curation over results. But also, the true high-efficiency creators prioritize their tools over everything. To be truly efficient and to get in the flow, you need tools that work with your particular style and approach. This is why there are lots of idiosyncratic tools and opinions about tools out there. Since not everyone works the same way or has the same preferences, there’s a natural market for unique tools that work differently to suit all those people. The “religious wars” over editors are really just people missing the point and arguing for no reason. Emacs is better for some people. Vim for others. Vscode for others. Notepad++ for others. Nano for others. This is a good thing.

If you don’t care about your craft or workflow enough to care about what tools you use, I wonder what level of quality you can achieve.

I agree to an extent that tools are not important.

But, for me, there is a certain threshold that a tool must pass to be useful. A tool that is below this level is only slowing you down or limiting your abilities.

You wouldn't use a knife to tighten screws if you have a perfectly good screwdriver lying around. And there's little to no advantage of buying a new expensive or over-engineered screwdriver.

I believe, plain vi is the lowest I can go for writing code. That doesn't mean that I can't use notepad or nano, but they fall under the level of being useful and only cripple and slow me down.

Ghostty passes this level of usability for me, but personally I'm fine with st - no gpu, no cpu spikes, uses barely any ram and still feels snappier. So, what's the point?

From one old man to another it's tough when you lose that spark.