Why don't you like dark mode? Most developers I know love it, including me
Ah ok. That's why I prefer dark mode. The light mode strains my eyes.
People are so weird
@grimalkina @eljorgeabides @glyph somewhat related to dark mode and “technical” looking things, this critique of syntax highlighting was excellent and i installed it in my environment and am enjoying a better reading experience
@grimalkina @vic forewarning: they are all extremely annoying and you will almost certainly want to turn them off or ignore the interruption. one of these days I'm going to write my own that addresses my long laundry list of issues with https://apps.apple.com/us/app/intermission-breaks-for-eyes/id1439431081 but in the meanwhile I keep using it because I don't want my eyes to roll out of my head
(Author's site is https://tryintermission.com but the cert is recently expired; hopefully they fix it)
@flexasync @glyph @grimalkina
I am that cliché.
Using a different keyboard layout.
Know how to exit vim
And the extension of that: use vim keybindings wherever possible.
But then again, I knew/know some brilliant techy people who where pretty vanilla operating system persons 🤷♂️
In a corporate environ I would prefer to get a closed corporate machine - with the only extension, that I can run a virtual machine in it.
That will be heavily customized - which reduces all the setup, if I have to switch machines (just take the VM with me) and does not require me to have admin/installation rights in a corporate environment.
but I digress
@grimalkina I am starting a new job and had to read a bunch of starting paperwork, all of which used the Calibri font face. Which has a ton of subtext, regardless of what the paperwork actually says, about the company culture.
Like, say, imagine that same paperwork in Computer Modern, from LaTeX, and the very different signals that would send about the company.
Obviously, we love to make fun of Comic Sans or Papyrus, but even the very boring default font faces do send signals.
@ricko Rick you have to tell us what those signals are saying to you because some people* don't know!!
*me, although maybe if I tested myself on implicit associations I would, just don't know fonts that well of the top of my head
@grimalkina Hahahaha. Totally fair.
Okay, so Calibri has been the default "business" font in MS Office for almost 20 years now, designed to replace Arial for new high-density displays and better kerning.
To overgeneralize, many businesses will use Calibri because it is bland and inoffensive, and the opposite of eye-catching: it just sort of fades into the background. [1] Thus, it's great (sarcasm) to use for all kinds of corporate proclamations which come "down from above" without any human names attached.
Computer Modern is the font you see on most research papers, because it's the default for LaTeX, which is like Word but for people who need lots of equations everywhere. If used for corp docs, it might signal comfortable familiarity to other researchers, but would probably put everyone else on alert.
@grimalkina Yeah, I feel like the LaTeX fonts and classes/layouts generally give off strong signals of density and heft. Like, to read this thing you're really going to have to sit and concentrate on every word — skimming won't cut it.
Using it to signal you don't want to do anything actionable seems pretty well aligned with how I'd interpret it.
@ricko @grimalkina "most research papers" is itself discipline specific. It reads to me as "this is a math/physics/CS person."
I didn't realize what biases I was bringing to the table alongside that read until I saw some really wild manifesto, maybe 10-15 years ago, that appeared to have been typeset in LaTeX. The incongruity between my assumptions and the quality of the words was a welcome wake-up call.
Cat Hicks
Violet/Multi
oisin
Glyph
Eljorgeabides
Empterdose
arosien
Jeff Miller (orange hatband)
✧✦Catherine✦✧
Vic 🇪🇺
0xC0DEC0DE07EA
Adam Davis
Abhijit Menon-Sen
Guy
Dirk Willrodt
Roy
Rick Osborne
Erin JonaitisDon't Stop, Girlypop! which did the inverse