I don't think it was meant to be hostile. It is a pattern I always find myself repeating personally. I think they just recognised it as something they do themselves.

If I feel like I have too many things to do, I can end up installing all sorts of todo list apps instead of doing the things. When I feel like a need a nap, I look up optimal nap times, end up reading stuff and then realising I missed the window I could have had a nap in.

I've set up vimwiki and loads of other note taking type apps (or knowledge management apps as they are often called now) and I export my notes from one system into another, and forget to use it.

Flatly: “How dare you lovingly handcraft a bespoke wordworking tool when you could have written a short story instead! We hackers would never spend time improving our circumstances to create more efficient flow states going forward rather than just drearily producing output less efficiently!”

Well if it's strangely hostile I'm sorry but "I need to focus on writing so I spent a few days stripping down a Linux distro" seems pretty disconnected.

I mean it's a fun project!

But it really reminds me of something I would do that isn't entirely positive.