1. Emacs vs Vi;
2. Linux vs Window vs macOS;
3. Editor vs IDE;
4. Static vs dynamic typing;
5. AI assisted programming vs not doing that.

That latest entry in that unfortunate list is pretty recent. Like always, there's the proponents who feel they've seen the light and need to share the good news, and the other side, deeply sceptical. Any conversation between these two groups quickly turns into insults - not necessarily the kind social networks have filters for, but at least subtle stabs at each other's competence.

I've been wondering about this. Why do people feel the need to spread the gospel about tools that work for them? Why is there such strong opposition on the other side against stuff they have often not even tried? Why do so many people get so worked up about this stuff? I mean, who cares what other people use? I never really did. It's just tools.

Even though I see this again and again and again, for decades now, I still can't get to the bottom of it. Is it some kind of tough love style benevolence? Is it arrogance? Or just a terminal lack of empathy?

My opinion on the matter is dry: Everybody should just use what works for them. I don't need to understand why a tool that doesn't work for me works for somebody else, or vice versa. People are different, they have different skills, different things that motivate them, different problems to solve. Some say there's a best tool for the job, but I rather think there's multiple good tools for any given job, and what really matters is not just what needs to be done, but also who is doing it.

I do get the itch to share my thoughts occasionally. I talk to people and get to share with them in conversation, but that's ephemeral. A blog is more public and more permanent. Which are, funny enough, probably the main two reasons why I never kept it up.

What if the stuff I write is silly - if not now, perhaps a year from now? What if somebody else already wrote about this, did more research, is more knowledgeable, smarter or both, and I'm just adding noise that detracts from these superior posts I could just read and share instead of writing my own?

I suppose it took me almost reaching 40 to realise that both of these things are true, and that's fine. A lot of what seems wise to me today will seem silly in the future. And there is definitely people out there who are better than me at everything I can do.

For some reason, I'm entirely cool with that, now. What's there to lose? Who's even going to read this? Doesn't seem to matter very much. Social media of any shape or form just feels overwhelming to me. I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I could swear the average LinkedIn user spends more time writing posts and comments than reading what others write. Feels weird to write anything there, like joining a large group of people all shouting into a void. And that's even without considering that a good chunk of that "content" these days is probably machine generated.

As anachronistic as blogs may be today, they seem like the optimal medium for me. There's no noise. I have no need to produce content to satisfy some algorithm that's going to make me famous. I can just share my thoughts, almost as in a personal journal, and if nobody except for me ever reads them, that's completely fine.

So I'm going to try this again. Let's see if I keep it up.