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Screwdriver Narrowness Considered Harmful
Merlin Also | Oct 26 2005
Something I actually think about a lot just popped out in an email to an internet acquaintance who makes Mac software Quote: One thing to know about me (and probably a surprisingly large number of your customers and potential customers): there's very little mutual exclusivity in my software world. For example, I use TextEdit, Vim, and TextMate pretty much every day and for completely different things. To me it's like having several screwdrivers. I could be that guy who insists there's only One True and Good Screwdriver, but I prefer to keep them all handy and just grab the one I need for the job. Does that make any sense? I mean I hear these territorial pissing matches on `foo tool` vs. `bar tool`, and how the fate of the world turns on making the right decision one time, and then becoming some kind of viral evangelist. Meh. There's stuff like Quicksilver and OS X in general where you inherently have to choose a platform. But what about text editors, graphics apps--jeez, even _notebooks_? Am I the only one who employs a stable of several different tools for a certain kind of task? Esp. where one is clearly better at one portion of the task than the others? How about you? 23 Comments
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 I often use different tools,...Submitted by patrickrhone on October 26, 2005 - 10:20am.
I often use different tools, that do essentially the same job, depending on the need. Take Notetaker and OmniOutliner for example. Both are outliners but I use them for entirely different tasks. I use Notetaker as basically a digital commonplace book. I use OmniOutliner for just about every other outlining task I have (including expense tracking, bill paying, project planning, you name it). Could I just use one for that? Sure I could but I find that one works better for a particular job than the other. In that same vein I am sure I could put other little snippets of data like passwords and such in either one but I put those in Notational Velocity for the same reason. It just works better than the others for that particular purpose. Redundancy is not waste when it works. » POSTED IN:
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