Brag About Your Content, Not Your Tools

Something needs to be said about people’s obsession with their tools, e.g., Linux vs. Windows, Vim vs. Nano, Sublime vs. Atom, etc.

Your tools don’t matter to other people. What matters is what you create with them.

Dave has started multiple companies, employed hundreds of people, and created multiple tools.

Dave Kennedy—aka @HackingDave—has done more for the community (and the world) using Windows and Nano than 99.9% of people using Linux, Mac, Vim, Emacs, or an Oscilliscope-Abacus Transcriber.

Hmmm am I the only one that prefers writing emails, blogs, and docs in nano (nano > vi) first then pop it into work for spell checking ?

I’ll even add screenshots or what not as a separate file and incorporate them later…

— Dave Kennedy (@HackingDave) June 20, 2019

I even wrote a Vim Primer.

Listen, I’m a Vim Snob myself. I love Vim. As an athiest, it’s kind of a religion for me. But I don’t make the mistake of linking it with my output.

Before you start with your tool snobbery, maybe ask yourself what someone has produced, and compare that to yours.

GRR Martin uses Wordstar as his word processor

Ever noticed that most people using static-site generators only blog about their blogging platform?

George RR Martin uses Wordstar—an old clunker of a DOS word processor. Stephen King and JK Rowling use Microsoft Word. And the most prolific bloggers tend to use WordPress, not a free-range, organic, static-site generator.

I’m a Tool Snob too, but without the snobbery.

Judging content-creators by their toolchains is like judging chefs by their kitchen knives.

So by all means—tell me again about your .vimrc file with that condescending tone. But don’t think for a second that it makes you a better producer of code or content. The metric is output and the value of that output. Period.

If you produce nothing-garbage, nobody will care what you made it on. And if you produce stuff that people love, feel free to make it on Windows Vista running Notepad++.

Nobody cares.

Pick your tooling based on what gets you excited and motivated to create, give people the freedom to do the same, and judge people based on their output.

NotesTo be clear, it’s enjoyable to go off into your tooling. To optimize it, to give people good-natured shit about what they used and don’t use. That’s part of geek culture, and it’s good fun. But don’t buy into it as having anything to do with reality. Output is what matters.All that being said, people using Nano should be reported to The Hague. 😊

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