I can't prove that neolithic hunters sorted themselves into cultures based on the pointy rock they preferred, but I wouldn't doubt it.
I'm old enough to remember the Mac vs. PC cultural divide, with the ubiquitous ads of the hip/cool "I'm a Mac" dude teasing the corporate "I'm a PC" guy.
And before that there was the stereotype of the young, fast-and-loose, self-taught PC programmer battling against the stodgy mainframe empire of IBM.
With a little bit of searching I found plenty of examples of cultural divides centered on tools:
1920s-1950s: Stanley vs. Craftsman
1900s-1940s: Yankee vs. Generic
1910s-1930s: Atlas vs. Independent
1800s-1900s: American vs. British Toolmaking
My point--if there is one--is that this is not a new phenomenon that emerged from notetaking software. This is likely a deep feature of human nature.
Does the author find it aesthetic or artistic to write like this? No caps, incomplete sentences, banal and faux-poetic prose? He's writing an opinion piece about software, it doesn't need to read like Tumblr poetry written by teenagers.
I vaguely felt like I was reading an ad for Arc, a browser I have never heard of before, with some content wrapped around it. Kind of like those gross Apple ads that showed Einstein and Madame Curie to sell iMacs.
I know a lot of people running Chromium engine browsers (and I have brave installed for the occasionally necessary IPMI widget or whatever), but I see a lot of Safari on MacOS, a lot of Edge (Chromium/Blink based IIRC) on Windows, and a lot of Firefox on Linux and Android (where I have Vanadium via Graphene).
This is a very technical/programmer sample, so leading indicator at best, but it seems like "best on platform" is making at least a minor comeback.
Five years ago that same kind of a sample was all Chrome and the Firefox weirdo. Now I'm the Firefox weirdo.
Apple invented this concept for computers and software… before then it was cars. It’s legit human behavior.
Even people who are above it all are in itself identifying with that mentality in itself. It’s inescapable. You are part of some tribe whether you care to admit it or not. And your usage of tools goes beyond just utility and speaks to an identity.
I'm going to dissent - The smaller/fewer screens you have and the more default your config, the more important, mysterious and highly paid you are. The guy with the tiny macbook that never bothered to remove any of the dock programs their machine shipped with (bro, why do still have Contacts in your dock?) and still has the terminal (terminal, not iTerm) background color set to the retina-searing default white will 9 times out of 10 be the smartest, humblest mf in the room. 100 percent chance they will show you the most devastatingly elegant solutions to problems that stumped your whole team for a week.
Very fun citations. Provocative and in line with what I want to believe.
I hope computing gets to the point where taste matters. It still feels like the lowest common denominator rules, that hyper-massified same-tool-for-everyone computing is where we have been latched up for most of a decade now. That it takes scale to survive and only by making the most universal of products do we get to scale.
I really want to believe that taste & discernment & distinction may rise again. That there is some kind of demand-side desire, some reward, for having taste, for modelling good hip interesting.
It feels faded, worn but I still think it's mostly that we have failed to rebuild cool, lost our own cool, that has made Tim O'Reilly's "follow the alpha geeks" mantra lose its luster. Folks seem empowered in little narrow verticals & to be doing well with for example mentioned here Notion or Obsidian, but it's software lifecycle within a very small segment. It doesn't affect the rest of most of those user's computing life. That's just not sufficiently cool, not broadscale enough to fully be a believable follows le lifestyle.
I take offense to the notion, ahem, that Obsidian somehow isn't aesthetic. It's as minimal as you want it to be and looks great especially with a theme.
It's been that way for a long time. I remember when some non-techie friends were opining at the bar on what having a @gmail.com vs a @aol.com email said about a person, circa 2006. At the time, I found it completely surprising that it implied anything about a person other than wanting 1GB storage and search for email.
Fun little post. An Arc & Notion early adopter right there. Probably using Dia now. Also the short phrases, and lowercase writing. I know a few like that, toned down over the years but still a pretty consistent subset: The ones that were doing hyperdetailed skeuomorphic iOS icons in Omnigraffle or Sketch back then in 2010, but suddenly remembered how they always loved minimalism when iOS 7 came out. Or Rails early adopters.
I do observe their workflow and tools as some sort of vibe check every few years, don't agree on everything; they don't seem to favor solutions that seek to remain stable over time, but also aren't full tinkerer experimental. They also avoid the design-experimental part, kind of like the weird yet productive nadir, like tools that resemble the AmigaOS times.
The Obsidian comparison was a cheap shot, compare to Vim? Come on. I wonder where does this person stand on other stuff like Vivaldi or Brave. Or notetaking apps like Affine or Anytype. Or Reflect, Recall, Rewind. Or Screenpipe. Whatever.
I'm sorry, I know it's tangential, but how was anyone able to read all that AI fluff?
It wasn't just frustrating, it was terribly repetitive. It's not ~~just~~ the content of the post, it's the way that it's written. And the AI authorship disclaimer? Missing. (Not that that would've made the contents much better, but it would've made it a bit more palatable and feel less sneaky.)
Software didn't "change". It's mostly linkedin social signaling that dragged everyone to use the same tools as the "successful bros". Cargo culting technologists are everywhere today, from the newbie who can git but can't write 10 bug free lines of code, to the HR person uploading his daily breakfast to github because he s "a techie". Software is like fashion nowadays , built for mass appeal to twitter and teamblind.com users. The craftsmen, fewer-and-fewer every year don't even tell you what tools they use.
21 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] threadI'm old enough to remember the Mac vs. PC cultural divide, with the ubiquitous ads of the hip/cool "I'm a Mac" dude teasing the corporate "I'm a PC" guy.
And before that there was the stereotype of the young, fast-and-loose, self-taught PC programmer battling against the stodgy mainframe empire of IBM.
With a little bit of searching I found plenty of examples of cultural divides centered on tools:
1920s-1950s: Stanley vs. Craftsman
1900s-1940s: Yankee vs. Generic
1910s-1930s: Atlas vs. Independent
1800s-1900s: American vs. British Toolmaking
My point--if there is one--is that this is not a new phenomenon that emerged from notetaking software. This is likely a deep feature of human nature.
This is why I never really understood obsidian, it's just paying for someone else to do what you should already have done?
I don't know what universe the author is living in, has anyone else realized "everyone around them stopped using Chrome"?
This is a very technical/programmer sample, so leading indicator at best, but it seems like "best on platform" is making at least a minor comeback.
Five years ago that same kind of a sample was all Chrome and the Firefox weirdo. Now I'm the Firefox weirdo.
Even people who are above it all are in itself identifying with that mentality in itself. It’s inescapable. You are part of some tribe whether you care to admit it or not. And your usage of tools goes beyond just utility and speaks to an identity.
I agree though that tools can cause some affinity. If I see people using neovim, I would be curious what plugins they use.
I hope computing gets to the point where taste matters. It still feels like the lowest common denominator rules, that hyper-massified same-tool-for-everyone computing is where we have been latched up for most of a decade now. That it takes scale to survive and only by making the most universal of products do we get to scale.
I really want to believe that taste & discernment & distinction may rise again. That there is some kind of demand-side desire, some reward, for having taste, for modelling good hip interesting.
It feels faded, worn but I still think it's mostly that we have failed to rebuild cool, lost our own cool, that has made Tim O'Reilly's "follow the alpha geeks" mantra lose its luster. Folks seem empowered in little narrow verticals & to be doing well with for example mentioned here Notion or Obsidian, but it's software lifecycle within a very small segment. It doesn't affect the rest of most of those user's computing life. That's just not sufficiently cool, not broadscale enough to fully be a believable follows le lifestyle.
I do observe their workflow and tools as some sort of vibe check every few years, don't agree on everything; they don't seem to favor solutions that seek to remain stable over time, but also aren't full tinkerer experimental. They also avoid the design-experimental part, kind of like the weird yet productive nadir, like tools that resemble the AmigaOS times.
The Obsidian comparison was a cheap shot, compare to Vim? Come on. I wonder where does this person stand on other stuff like Vivaldi or Brave. Or notetaking apps like Affine or Anytype. Or Reflect, Recall, Rewind. Or Screenpipe. Whatever.
It wasn't just frustrating, it was terribly repetitive. It's not ~~just~~ the content of the post, it's the way that it's written. And the AI authorship disclaimer? Missing. (Not that that would've made the contents much better, but it would've made it a bit more palatable and feel less sneaky.)
It's a button, conveniently placed on any standard keyboard, that temporarily capitalizes the letters you type whilst holding it down.
I think it's gonna change the world. Would you be interested in an early release preview?