Read on Twitter
Gonna try to figure some stuff out in a stream of consciousness thread about software configuration and augmentation okay? okay
So I'm a pretty avid Vim fanatic, right? And you get two classes of Vim fanatics: people who do pure vimnilla and people who mod the hell out of it
So I'm a pretty avid Vim fanatic, right? And you get two classes of Vim fanatics: people who do pure vimnilla and people who mod the hell out of it
I'm solidly in category two: My vimrc is 600 lines long. But I've compared it to a lot of other long vim configs and it ends up being pretty different: relatively little plugin config, TONS of maps and small functions I wrote myself
It's at the point where other vim users struggle to use my setup, since I've personalized it so much to myself.
But I've done the same to my computer, too. I've got a few hundred lines of AutoHotKey scripts, and AHK is the sole reason I stay on Windows
But I've done the same to my computer, too. I've got a few hundred lines of AutoHotKey scripts, and AHK is the sole reason I stay on Windows
One example AHK script: if I hit rctrl+ralt+s, it reopens the current tab in sci-hub. Makes academic research a lot easier. I got tons of things like that
It's all stuff that the Operating System doesn't "natively" provide. I can configure the OS, but minimally
It's all stuff that the Operating System doesn't "natively" provide. I can configure the OS, but minimally
Usually when I see people talk about customization, they talk about, like, skins or highlighting schemes or fonts. When I see customization as in changing the behavior of the computer, which is much less supported by all conventional operating systems
Which I guess makes sense? Windows wasn't designed for me, it was designed to be used by hundreds of millions of people. It's going to make decisions that don't help, or even hinder, my peculiar uses of the machine
But that means I have to use it suboptimally, because it's not what's best for me. Presumably configuration could address some of this, but "more configuration" is an opportunity and feature cost the devs don't want to pay. Might even be overall business-harmful :/
But there also seems be a lack of... like, imagination here? In me, too. It's hard to think of ways that the machine can feasibly *and* significantly augment my life. It took me a while to realize "reopen in scihub" was 1) a good idea, and 2) something I could easily implement
Lots of the low hanging fruits is adding features businesses won't. Like Twitter: I can't mute retweets on lists like I can for follows. Twitter doesn't provide the feature, one augment would be adding that client-side to the browser
What's frustrating is that augmentation is individually hard and uneconomical at scale, but makes things so much better! My scihub augment meaningfully improved my life. I don't think I'm special here: I think ALL people are using suboptimal systems for themselves
Tyranny of the Pareto principle: 80% of users only care about 20% of the features, but it's a different 20% each time. Corollary being "each user is using a product that's 20% as good for their purposes as it could have been"
At the very least, I wish apps were designed knowing that some user augment their experience. I've come to dread electron apps because AHK can't hook into them properly.
(Allowing the js dev console in electron would fix that, but none do in prod)
(Allowing the js dev console in electron would fix that, but none do in prod)
Okay, tying this to a more central thesis: what bothers me more than anything is that I'm "unusual" for approaching the computer this way. For having such a heavy vim config, so many AHK scripts, and so many powershell automators
At the very least, I'd expect all devs to be the same way: people who have the skills needed to augment computers as they current stand customizing their experiences to better match themselves. I know this just doesn't interest some people, but I think OSes discourage it too
Augmentation is something inflicted *on* the computer, not something that the computer expects to work with it. I'm doing invasive surgery with all my AHK scripts, fighting against things
Several people in responses have mentioned emacs. The problem with emacs is then I'm absorbing the whole computing environment into emacs. I want something that works with the present world. I want to augment firefox and Spotify and Vim and Rimworld
Also people saying "why not build the entire system yourself". Because that's too much for me. I want to be able to augment and customize without having to learn Arch
I realize now that I don't have a coherent theory of "augmentation". My worldview is very vim-centric: most of my augmentations are things that save a few seconds of actions or keystrokes. Compress a multiple-step process into a single shortcut
Or something that takes an action without requiring conscious thought, or a context switch. Or, in the case of the proposed Twitter filter, something that affects the information I see to make it cleaner
"last-mile customizations" is the perfect metaphor https://twitter.com/reid_dc/status/1355620566951190528
Suddenly realizing how ADD my augmentations are. Mild inconveniences are a huge drag on me and lead to distractions, so if I want to get anything done I need to cut out as many mild inconveniences as possible
