alt Hacker NewsWhat is a good tool that's invisible? I'm genuinely curious. All tools I've used are either simple and heavily limited (so, not "invisible" because hard things are hard) or powerful but heavily specialized (so, not "invisible" because the learning curve is very evident). I feel the trade off is inescapable.
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I think this is really insightful. Every "good and invisible" tool I thought of fit neatly into one of those two categories. Examples:
Powerful and specialized: automatic transmission, display/monitors
Simple and limited: syntax highlighting, deterministic autocomplete
The closest ones imo that bridge the gap: ssh, google search
That's just it though isn't it. Good tools that are invisible to you won't easily come to mind because they tend to be, well, invisible.
It's not until you randomly end up on a system which doesn't have that tool that its usefulness becomes visible; and I mean really visible.
A tilling window manager is a fantastic tool that is close to invisible.
Though I don’t agree with the author. Visibility isn’t what matters, if you get comfortable with a specialized tool like a CAD software, or a game engine studio like Unreal, it’s not invisible at all but your brain will stop focusing on all the noise on your screen and you become pretty focused and productive. I live emacs, but Rider is also a fantastic editor.
Though I would love for things like LLMs to be way more out of your way, more “invisible”, more tool like. I hate the current UX of having to tame a patronizing, annoying fake human just to get things done the way I want them to be done