Hard Mode and Modularity

I went down the morning’s RSS hole and found Jeremy’s Take on Rules’ article on “Hard Mode” along with the subsequent reading of Joan Westenberg’s source post really thoughtful.

Both blogs are written by great and thoughtful folks and anyone should be putting them in their feeds. Go do that now… I’ll wait…

:-)

It got me reaffirming my less-well-thought-out thoughts of my own need for simplicity. Joan’s article really crystalized my own vague feelings about people “flexing” in IT these days. It feels to be posturing and not ultimately useful.

However, I also understand the puzzle solving mindset, which Jeremy demonstrates in many posts. We have talked occasionally and I definitely don’t put them in the “flexing” bucket by any stretch. So they are definitely a good read for taking something like emacs and tweaking it to meet a better need.

Reading all of this is taking me back to my gravitation to the traditional UNIX/Linux mindset of simple tools to chain together; modularity. I think modular solutions (could this be emacs too?) are ways to make more complex things, but without the flex of hard mode.

Looking at how I have been taking notes, I have often talked about nb (https://xwmx.github.io/nb/). On the surface, it also looks like a possibly complex thing. However, it is one single bash script that chains other tools together in a more traditional UNIX/Linux mindset. Add to that the script itself is an awesome bash reference. If you want to so something in that language and aren’t quite sure, you can bet you will see a function or chunk of code in there. nb in that sense does double duty of being a useful note taking ecosystem along with being a teaching device with easy access “under the hood”.

Do you have any thoughts or tools that allows complexity without the posturing of “Hard Mode”? Pleasea reach out!