turbulent
Veronica ExplainsI'll take decentralized and janky over simple and evil.
Every day I try to remember the paradox of convenience:
When a tool is challenging early, it sucks early, but often it's great later.
When a tool is easy early, it sucks later.
Tealful Eyes@veronica Yup! Unless it has been around so long(and usually open source) things are streamlined from decades of feedback and QoL, this is usually my experience too. Often found that tools that have a lot of upfront hurdles are generally that way because it grants an extreme degree of freedom later on.
Personally enjoy learning new things too, so I oddly find the challenges both fun and rewarding. Worst case I find the tool doesn't fit my needs, but I know more of what I want.
Shaadra
Jaap Zeldenrust@veronica
I didn't know this rule applied beyond the domain of dress shoes.
You learn something new every day, I guess.
patter
Brian Owen@veronica I love this. Also perfectly explains my stages of vim learning.
Mรฏkรช ๐ฉโ๐ฆฏ ๐ ๐๐๐ก๏ธ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ@veronica Exactly! Machiavelli noticed this too. He said something like "A prince who acquires his kingdom with ease will keep it with difficulty, and he who acquires his with difficulty, will keep it with ease." I've always thought it was his most useful lesson.
Mauricio Teixeira โฝ๐บ๐ธ๐ง๐ท๐@veronica
Interesting words to consider. Thanks!
Interesting words to consider. Thanks!
Eggs now in different baskets.@veronica Tools that are easy to start with can also teach you bad habits which end up being hard to unlearn.
A bit like not learning the proper fingerings when you start playing a bass guitar.
Then later that great bass line you really want to learn is that much harder as you have to re-learn how to play at the same time.
progo in NYC@veronica I feel like this should apply to Emacs vs Visual Studio Code. But I can't bring myself to give Emacs a fair try.
I had a wise old hacker tell me years ago on IRC: "I use Emacs every day. And it's a hot mess. You probably shouldn't learn it." :^)
Chris-Evelyn@progo If you want to learn Emacs, try everything but text editing first.
No joke. dired-mode (directory editing) is a nice file manager, eshell a neat terminal and doing Git things with Magit is just great. And org-mode for notes and outlines.
One day Iโll get around to writing code in it, too.
Gwen the em dashing Fops 
@veronica I think this is half a self inflicted issue (at industry scale). I agree that it is the case now, but I wanna try to make a case for a better future
There's no technical reason why a powerful tool can't have a good introduction and ease of learning. The main reasons why these things don't happen today, at least from what I've seen are: tools managed by corporations and intended as introductory end up needing to sell the premium tool, or have all their power removed for fear of a user review in the vein of "I destroyed all my stuff with this tool" (by using it wrong); tools managed by corporations intended for professional use, having all the capabilities but expecting you to already know how to use them; or open tools that are managed by a community of enthusiasts who can't put themselves in the shoes of new users and often don't even care to try
My experience with trying to make GDB more usable to those that don't know how has been met with enthusiastic "that will be really great" followed by apathy in patch review or even inability to understand why an error message is confusing if you don't know what we mean by "target".
If there were more maintainers who cared about UX, more UX experts who felt welcome to contribute, and less of disdain for a software having reasonable and easy to change default options, I feel like we could be over the paradox of convenience eventually
There's no technical reason why a powerful tool can't have a good introduction and ease of learning. The main reasons why these things don't happen today, at least from what I've seen are: tools managed by corporations and intended as introductory end up needing to sell the premium tool, or have all their power removed for fear of a user review in the vein of "I destroyed all my stuff with this tool" (by using it wrong); tools managed by corporations intended for professional use, having all the capabilities but expecting you to already know how to use them; or open tools that are managed by a community of enthusiasts who can't put themselves in the shoes of new users and often don't even care to try
My experience with trying to make GDB more usable to those that don't know how has been met with enthusiastic "that will be really great" followed by apathy in patch review or even inability to understand why an error message is confusing if you don't know what we mean by "target".
If there were more maintainers who cared about UX, more UX experts who felt welcome to contribute, and less of disdain for a software having reasonable and easy to change default options, I feel like we could be over the paradox of convenience eventually
Matthew 
Faraiwe
K. Ryabitsev-Prime ๐@veronica come join the kernel development, we've got decentralized and janky DOWN PAT. :)
@monsieuricon I'll dust off my C book and be right there! :)
Light@monsieuricon
I know you're joking, but I don't think anyone has ever thought of a way to do software development in a truly decentralized manner, especially not with a BDFL.
Disclaimer: I'm not a software engineer (yet), just a enthusiastic power(?) user.
@veronica
I know you're joking, but I don't think anyone has ever thought of a way to do software development in a truly decentralized manner, especially not with a BDFL.
Disclaimer: I'm not a software engineer (yet), just a enthusiastic power(?) user.
@veronica
Miles Offit... ๐จ๐ฆ๐ช๐บ๐บ๐ฆ@veronica 100% percent of the time IMO.
locnar@veronica My group of peeps saw this coming and have moved to Matrix with an Element front end as a choice on web, as well as the standard bring you own client. Fluffychat is good apparently for that as well. All the other Discord drop ins are seeded with the same issues that Discord now has. Oh for the old internet...
Super Owl@veronica I agree with you, but just saying, there's an ocean of self-help gurus out there who would 1000% side with the latter. Side with simplicity, period, they would say. There's nothing beyond simplicity - no further concern to speak of - to hear them tell it. There are no macro-level problems which can be cared about in a simple moment.
Mark Down@veronica my home is a shrine to jank. Things mostly work, many bits of tech are DIY or repaired hardware with new firmware. My phone is running GrapheneOS (thanks for the excellent videos on that, BTW), and I've abandoned most visible algorithms. My Bluetooth mic doesn't quite work right cuz I repaired my headphones.
Decentralised and janky reminds me why I fell in love with tech in the first place. Convenience kinda sucks the fun out of it.
If you can't open it, you don't own it.
@veronica "Decentralized and janky" reminds me of the dial-up internet of the early 1990s using a computer with a CPU clock speed of 12 MHz, a tiny hard drive and 2MB of RAM.
Then that speed boost when I finally could afford a 56k modem.
Steep learning curves all round but an amazing time.
BoloMKXXVIII@veronica
Ever notice that closed source software almost always gets worse over time, and open source software is usually the reverse?
Ever notice that closed source software almost always gets worse over time, and open source software is usually the reverse?
Drey
Colin
Greg Bell
tired
ๅ
Madagascar_SkyLol, decentralised and janky, that's my therapist's nickname for me.
Nova
indium114@veronica based take. Host my own Forgejo instance on an old laptop just on my local network for backups of my GitHub and whatnot. Had to deal with the thingโs IP rotating every couple weeks until I set up Tailscale because I canโt be bothered to set up static IP, but Iโll still take self-hosted any day
Felipe 
Stephen Brooks ๐ฆ@veronica Silicon Valley would like you to consider: janky and evil.
James Ed Randson 
@veronica Finally Veronica using GotoSocial. Make it simple.
an actual bus@veronica Einstein said "things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler".
Centralized and in the hands of a corrupt elite is a prime example of "too simple".
Von Xylofon@veronica I see. Janky and evil it is.
Lazarou Monkey Terror ๐๐๐@veronica same, feels more honest and safe.
Linux Renaissance@veronica I like that.
Evil Love ใVulonkaazใ@veronica the centralized corporate sites aren't even simple