I understand the true spirit of this post. But regarding finding the right tools for the job(which in this case is syntax highlighting) is worth chasing.
I was once helping out a relative of mine. Who was doing some freelance project in electronics. As a deliverable we had to ship some soldered boards in four days. We didn't quite have a organized working shop. The first night we worked it was a disaster. Nothing was in place, and we spent great deal of time solving confusions and finding scattered tools. Then the next day we spent all the day getting organized and finished the entire job the very next day. Getting organized helps.
But I noticed a strange thing during that project. As we were soldering, I realized apart from talking to each other about some topic intermittently. We never really got distracted and got off our seats and we were never distracted. We only took food and rest room breaks nothing more. How did that happen, I did simple analysis:
1. We were not spoiled by choice. Like in software where there are gazillion things and standards to choose from.
2. Focused task, Solder, pick components, debug, multimeter.
3. No such thing like a browser to distract.
4. Ability to measure goals. Something that is difficult to do in software.
5. Doing and exploring new things have a little higher barrier to entry. Thereby you don't shift tasks until you complete the current one completely.
6. Information available is to the point and not like software where every other blog has a hello,world program posted. Thereby doing something new requires iterations of focussed reading, implementing, testing.
Having said, this model is a little difficult to create in software. I guess Electronic engineers at a time were plagued with same problems decades back when they had 50 free PIC projects magazines near every door way. And having to worry about every new precision voltmeter that comes very other week.
Many of our problems will resolve automatically with some quality standardization in our industry.
We still quarrel about Text editors, things like syntax highlighting. Most technology communities should by now figure out that if you are releasing something cool, you also need to take care of the tooling.
I was once helping out a relative of mine. Who was doing some freelance project in electronics. As a deliverable we had to ship some soldered boards in four days. We didn't quite have a organized working shop. The first night we worked it was a disaster. Nothing was in place, and we spent great deal of time solving confusions and finding scattered tools. Then the next day we spent all the day getting organized and finished the entire job the very next day. Getting organized helps.
But I noticed a strange thing during that project. As we were soldering, I realized apart from talking to each other about some topic intermittently. We never really got distracted and got off our seats and we were never distracted. We only took food and rest room breaks nothing more. How did that happen, I did simple analysis:
Having said, this model is a little difficult to create in software. I guess Electronic engineers at a time were plagued with same problems decades back when they had 50 free PIC projects magazines near every door way. And having to worry about every new precision voltmeter that comes very other week.Many of our problems will resolve automatically with some quality standardization in our industry.
We still quarrel about Text editors, things like syntax highlighting. Most technology communities should by now figure out that if you are releasing something cool, you also need to take care of the tooling.