alt Hacker NewsI think the Lindy effect is less about making strong arguments about which tool to use in debates, and more about calling out and explaining a real life phenomenon.
I've invoked it in my job mostly to explain to younger developers why learning vim keybindings+terminal git usage while they have the most plasticity is most likely going to be a good bet for the remainder of their career, as editors, operating systems and associated keybindings & UI will change around them much more often than those fundamentals.
It's not a guarantee, and i wouldn't bet my entire business on the Lindy effect, but it is worth reflecting on it as an explanation of something that is paradoxical or not obvious.
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> I've invoked it in my job mostly to explain to younger developers why learning vim keybindings+terminal git usage
Interesting - I see it as the opposite: learning the git CLI is pointless. It’s slow, clunky and it doesn’t teach you any of the very interesting inner-workings of Git.
There are much better things to spend time learning, especially if your editor has a native git integration.
I agree and the article uses Lindy not in descriptive but prescriptive level.
For prescriptive, I would use Chesterton's Fence https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
This article from yesterday -
Good Tools Are Invisible
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121
In my opinion, software tools are different from software libraries.
Knowing RDBMS concepts and SQL is one thing, vim and git are something else altogether.