You browse Linux, productivity, or programming discussions online enough and I feel like you will come across some discussion about why Emacs, vim, or neovim is the best program ever created or something. Dozens of "this config unlocked my productivity" videos and posts. Arguments, threads, etc etc.

I will say this as a complete layman who does baby programming: I don't get it. Neovim came w/ my Fedora install. I've tried it. It does what it says on the tin. It edits files. I find the workflow clunky and unintuitive, personally. :wq - what happened to ctrl+s? :y+" to paste? Really?

I get terminal lovers. I do. When I need to quickly change one or two lines in a dotfile nvim does the job, especially if I'm going to re-load that dotfile right after. Don't have to leave my terminal! But nano does the same thing? AND nano lets me copy and paste with the same hotkey used on 90% of other programs.

So again, I don't get it. If I'm writing anything of significacnt length, I'm going to use an IDE or a proper text editor. Why would I proof read an essay in my unformatted, monospaced terminal? What about spell-check?

And before you tell me nvim can be extended to be a fully fledged IDE, I know. But you're telling me that it's legitimately better to spend an hour or two configuring nvim instead of just doing 'sudo dnf install codium', waiting 2 mins, and having the industry-standard IDE ready and waiting for me? Or opening libre office to edit long form text?

Maybe this phenomenon is something akin to the endless "second brain" videos on Youtube. "If you spend 6 hours now and then 5 mins every time you want to save a file - Obsidian will skyrocket your productivity!". It's the easthetics of productivity.

I do still like this article from Westerberg on deleting their second brain, where they mention:
"The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it - and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored".
The endless chase of the perfect tool just ends up replacing the task you were supposed to accomplish with said tool.

If your nvim/Emacs/vim config is like a 3rd arm for you, please do enjoy. That's awesome. I just don't get the evangelism.

It somewhat reminds me of that adage: "An amateur with the finest paints and canvas will likely still make shitter art than an expert with a cheap pencil". It's not the tool, it's your comfort, familiarity, and willingness to sit down and hone your craft that makes your "productive".

I'm willing to be proven wrong about vim, but I also want to stress it's fine to enjoy configuring and endless customization for its own sake. It's fun! It doesn't need retroactive justification of "increased productivity". Capitalism loves to tell us the ultimate point of life is the creation of 'value'. That's bullshit. Just do shit you like, make your mud pies.

Boot your PC, edit configs for 8 hours, look at your now prettier software home screen, go to bed. As long as you're a having fun and are a decent human otherwise who cares how 'productive' it is.

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kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com
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