undefined

points

[-]

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

by blanched5 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

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

by tpoacher5 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

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.

by dsmurrell6 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

The eye.

by curtisblaine6 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Many definitions of tool explicitly exclude body organs to draw a line between innate mechanisms that are inestricably linked to the body and objects used to extend one's innate physical or mental influence on the environment. The eye is not a tool, according to these definitions, but eyeglasses are.