Tools exist to serve its user, and so long as a tool keeps working there's no reason to replace it. In real life this is how tools are. You own a screwdriver and you use it until one day it breaks, and then you go and buy a new screwdriver just like your old one.
This is fundamentally different from the nature of computer software, which can completely change in scope and function from one version to another and introduce changes that "break" something for no good reason as far as the user is concerned.
Imagine for a moment if you will: You use your screwdriver everyday, but one day the handle suddenly changes to something completely new and the shaft falls out because the handle uses a new way of fastening the shaft.
You are told by the manufacturer to come in and have it replaced with the newest model, or if they're not so gracious they tell you to come in and buy the newest model.
And for what reason? The screwdriver was working fine until yesterday. You hate this, because as just a simple user there's no good reason the screwdriver suddenly changed itself. Whether you get it replaced or buy a new one, you're wasting time and even money.
You then realize, one way or another, you can just tell your screwdriver that it cannot change without your assent. Ever. You want, perhaps need your screwdriver to work everyday, so you tell it to never change. The manufacturer keeps changing their screwdriver, but yours never changes and it keeps working.
One day though, the screwdriver finally breaks and you need a new one. So you go and buy a new screwdriver. Except it's completely different. And completely incompatible with the rest of your workshop, and all the tools inside which you likewise told to never change.
We have furniture and some furniture uses screws to hold it together.
A furniture manufacturer decides to create a new line of furniture and introduces a new type of screw that requires you use a new screwdriver.
This screwdriver and screws are magical, they can magically alter themselves over time in small ways - they can change color, the handle can become rubberized or change texture, etc.
There's a whole group of people working on deciding how the screwdriver and screws magically alter themselves and which rubber material is best, which color is most pleasing, etc. They're so wrapped up in it, they never stop to ask, wait, why the fuck did this new line of furniture even require new screws and screwdrivers? When I compare the old line of furniture and the new, I can't tell the difference! It's the same shitty furniture!
We have multiple furniture manufacturers, why didn't we just agree to use the same screws and screwdrivers for all of them?
I don't get it - the people who are so passionate about screwdriver handles of one single manufacturer, to me, are a bunch of lunatics.
Meanwhile, lately it seems like all too often, you'll be pounding nails with a hammer and then in between swings, it suddenly turns into paint brush or a screwdriver or an Allen wrench.
Or you're working along one day, and all of a sudden, every machine screw in every piece of power equipment on the job site just up and disappears into thin air, and all of that equipment shakes itself apart into a maelstrom of shrapnel, because that little hidden component nobody thought about winked out of existence.
Construction workers would not put up with this bullshit.
Agreed. To take the author's metaphor a step further:
the reason the screwdriver was broken is because we're trying to use it as a hammer. So replacing it with an actual hammer makes sense. And the thing is, we still have a fully functional screwdriver at our disposal (for global styles, e.g.).
Just as if you could plan which tool you'd need for a job... You'd be surprised how quick you can go from using a ratchet, to an impact, to an air driven 3/4" impact, to requiring an oxy-acetylene torch for a given job...
How about we agree that we just don't have the same lifestyle ?
That's too generic statement to be applied to anything. Some specific failures of tools (what exactly?) may be the cause of other issues, but it's not the law of nature. You can hit your finger by a hummer, but it's not because hummer brought the wrong concepts - it served millions of people to build their homes, their farms and fences, it's just because sometimes you miss the nail.
This is kinda inherent in everything, our tech generally moves upwards based on iterations of improvements. Even cheap mass production shitty stuff is still an improvement. Or do you mean exactly screws?
Really when you get down to it, like computers, tools are used like 30+% of the time to build other better tools. Jigs, more accurate cutters, measurement devices, etc. With code that's things like test frameworks, rpc mechanisms, version control, code gen, etc. In fact in software engineering you're usually seen as a better engineer if you build things indirectly (frameworks) instead of mass production of the solution.
Check out the home machine shop series to see how you'd build up a tech stack from basically scrap metal and wood and Sand.
Our tooling's pretty shitty, generally, isn't well-standardized or anywhere close to it across the industry, is changing rapidly (largely not to any real purpose, though sure, sometimes improvements slip in) and we're all expected to become semi-competent (nowhere near enough time or brain space for full competence) on an absurdly large set of these tools—not just using them, but using several different ones for similar purposes but with different interfaces and quirks (boy do they have quirks), how to set them up, how to fix them when they break, and so on.
Oh and you can make a name (and pile of money) for yourself if you manage to promote some mediocre beta-quality-at-best tool and trick enough other people into using it, and if people call you out on it they're the assholes.
Every thought experiment that immediately comes to mind, in which other professions of various sorts had to deal with some similar situation on an ongoing and apparently never-ending basis, read as absurdist comedy. Yet here we are.
[EDIT] ok here's a fun one: imagine if framers had to use a different hammer depending on the brand of wood at the job site. Like, hammer weight is different and you even hold it differently. For some you can use air nailers, others you can't, some of them only work with air nailers that have a second person working the trigger while one holds them, all the different air nailers need different compressors, some of those take different voltage, shit like that. Imagine it's like that for all their tools and that these differences manifest in all sorts of ways based on the combinations of materials & tools.
We wouldn't say "gee why are house-builders so bad at building houses, and LOL they can never even tell us about how long it'll take", we'd say "holy shit how do any houses get built, it's practically a miracle, we should fix it so it's not so hard—for no good reason—to build houses"
I agree with this take. Tools should rarely require style updates. Sometimes you see style updates in hammers for example, but mostly they are gimmicks. A hammer from 89 years ago still hammers or pulls out nails. Some forms may be better for certain jobs (framing hammer, pein hammer, etc), but overall the design does not change very much.
When you introduce things like “titanium” and nail holders, etc., it’s mostly marketing gimmick and is reminiscent of kids’ toys. Kids need to constantly be provoked for new interest.
I've said this in various forms. Let's make it official...
Paul's law: All new build tools are better than what came before. Until they are able to solve all of the problems of the thing they replaced and then they're at least as bad. A new tool will then replace them
I was just thinking on this same analogy this morning.
What many people don't realize is that there are, off the top of my head, at least a dozen different distinct types of hammers, and then if you're talking working with metals at least a dozen or two more. There are way more types of nails, and then of course you have nail guns, of which there are multiple types, and of course screws. In philips heads alone, you have at least eight different sizes, and then of course flat head, torx (many types), allen (many sizes), square, hex, etc. For drivers you have a basic driver, a driver with swappable bits, a drill (cordless, corded (12v, 14v, etc)), a ratcheting driver (and hex bolts), an air driver, a butter knife, etc.
In many cases, there is clearly a "best" choice. If you're putting a treated deck on with nails, you're going to have a bad time. If you're framing with finishing nails, everyone is going to have a bad time.
But if you're building a shed, what do you go with? First and foremost, you make sure the fastener you're going to be working with is going to work, and then you choose the one you've worked with in the past, the one you have experience with, and the one you have on hand.
Software developers tend to be young. They tend not to have respect for what has come before them. They tend to be really, really fucking bored, nearly all the time.
They don't create new fasteners every two months, and switch hammers twice as often because it's prudent, more efficient, or necessary. More often than anything else, it's because they're way smarter than their job demands and they have nothing better to do.
There are ways to solve this. There are other professions that solve this. Prescribing statins all day and telling people to lose weight doesn't take a 135 IQ, and yet somehow doctors manage.
Programmers need to interact in a more masterful way with their tools.
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