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But you wouldn't complain you can't use a saw to drive nails in the wall, would you?


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Ironically when I need to drive a nail into my wall I don’t reach for my radial saw.

its a tool. use the tool. I don't care if the house is built using an old fashioned hammer or a nail gun. I do care if you used nails when you should've used something else, or used the wrong nails.

I know it's only a metaphor, but I've driven a picture hanger into the wall with vise grips before. An actual hammer just makes the job easier; it isn't the only way to drive a nail.

If you were an architect, would you let your builders use nails from a manufacturer that required the designs of your buildings be released if a single said nail was laid?

Even having that nail in my tool chest is a liability. I wouldn’t buy those nails to begin with.


You can't use a nail without a hammer.

I think the point they were trying to make is that the people who live in the house don't care that the nails are all hammered in with a screwdriver, but the people building it should.

Your comment is like "I don't need nails because I have screws".

Most people have no business using a pneumatic nail gun. No business at all. You won't hang pictures any faster, and your doghouse will probably look the same. Technically, everything done with a nail gun could be done with a hammer.

But if you didn't know what a nail gun was, never imagined the thing, could you imagine framing a 2-story house by hand? A large house might need teams of arms & hammers. Dozens. You wouldn't even see construction as the same kind of thing: more of a coordinated work of labor, like aisles of rowers on a trireme.

If I can type so fast I can think out loud into the machine, the flow changes. It's likewise hard to argue how a REPL changes much anything, since saving & recompiling is fast, but I think flow is rather important.


And furthermore, most nails aren't driven with a hammer at all, since the invention of the nail gun.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it’s tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Or maybe you do, if screws are so much cheaper than nails.

I know, right? This here is a classic example of a nail, so why wouldn't I use my trusty hammer..

If you don't have a hammer, nothing looks like a nail.

When your only tool is a hammer, you aim for the nails.

I was thinking "how would this do if fired from a nail gun" since as I understand it most commercial work is not done by hand nowadays anyways.

I am only as familiar as orenmazor describes above.

Would you have said that if I urged him to get a hammer to hit on nails, rather than a screwdriver? It is about as dogmatic. (you can put nails into a wall with a large enough screwdriver - I've done it myself before when the nail was small enough and i had no hammer - but it's still the wrong toolkit)


"How are we going to push this nail into this board?"

"We can use a hammer."

"A hammer is a tool, not a solution."


Yeah and if you have to drive a nail, you should use your fist instead of a hammer.

Sometimes all you need is a hammer because it's actually a nail.
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