7 ms·

I think the Lindy effect is less about making strong arguments about which tool to use in debates, and more about calling out and explaining a real life phenome

by mansa10 2mo ago

I think the Lindy effect is less about making strong arguments about which tool to use in debates, and more about calling out and explaining a real life phenomenon. I've invoked it in my job mostly to explain to younger developers why learning vim keybindings+terminal git usage while they have the most plasticity is most likely going to be a good bet for the remainder of their career, as editors, operating systems and associated keybindings & UI will change around them much more often than those fundamentals. It's not a guarantee, and i wouldn't bet my entire business on the Lindy effect, but it is worth reflecting on it as an explanation of something that is paradoxical or not obvious.

simianwords 2mo ago
I agree and the article uses Lindy not in descriptive but prescriptive level. For prescriptive, I would use Chesterton's Fence https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
orf 2mo ago
> I've invoked it in my job mostly to explain to younger developers why learning vim keybindings+terminal git usage Interesting - I see it as the opposite: learning the git CLI is pointless. It’s slow, clunky and it doesn’t teach you any of the very interesting inner-workings of Git. There are much better things to spend time learning, especially if your editor has a native git integration.
- mansa10 2mo ago
  You should learn internals as well, it's not mutually exclusive :) But at some point you have to teach your fingers some movements that will ideally make you fast on as many machines, as many operating systems, as many editors and as many keyboards for as many years of your career as possible.
thunderbong 2mo ago
This article from yesterday - Good Tools Are Invisible https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121 In my opinion, software tools are different from software libraries. Knowing RDBMS concepts and SQL is one thing, vim and git are something else altogether.

by mansa10 2mo ago

simianwords 2mo ago

I agree and the article uses Lindy not in descriptive but prescriptive level. For prescriptive, I would use Chesterton's Fence https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

orf 2mo ago

> I've invoked it in my job mostly to explain to younger developers why learning vim keybindings+terminal git usage Interesting - I see it as the opposite: learning the git CLI is pointless. It’s slow, clunky and it doesn’t teach you any of the very interesting inner-workings of Git. There are much better things to spend time learning, especially if your editor has a native git integration.

mansa10 2mo ago
You should learn internals as well, it's not mutually exclusive :) But at some point you have to teach your fingers some movements that will ideally make you fast on as many machines, as many operating systems, as many editors and as many keyboards for as many years of your career as possible.

thunderbong 2mo ago

This article from yesterday - Good Tools Are Invisible https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121 In my opinion, software tools are different from software libraries. Knowing RDBMS concepts and SQL is one thing, vim and git are something else altogether.