Garote is a developer who hosts a NetHack ascension story and an annotated update of Neal Stephenson's command line essay.
Commenters link its NetHack adventure as one of the best ascension write-ups and recommend its updated version of Stephenson's essay.
Somebody did do a ten(?) year update to it with Stephenson's blessing, but from recollection I think they didn't really grok why OS X was so good. They also didn't write as well as Neal, but hey, that's not an especially exclusive group.
http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html
It is good and original, but the bits that are good are not original, and the bits that are original are not good.
I recall reading it and thinking "he got that wrong, and that's wrong, and that's wrong, and all of that is wrong" all the way through. I think he was one of those pundits that fundamentally just doesn't understand why people like working with an OS like OS X, they think it is because of some superficial silly reason. Like "consumers like it because it is white and shiny" or "because the UI is pretty".
No no no. A thousand times no. I and everyone I have talked to who uses both, prefer the Mac because Windows is like the death of a thousand papercuts. There is in general no one thing you can point to that is especially horrible (obvious exceptions: Win ME and early Vista and Win CE), but there are a million different things that all add up to an unpleasant experience.
Disclaimer: I used Windows 7 on a decent spec machine recently and it was actually pretty good. But see the above quote about good and original. If Windows is going to end up just copying all the good bits from some other OS, why not switch to that OS now and get the benefits straight away rather than…
OK, fine, so let's go with it.
Since my impression is that HN people are [a] xNix fans [b] often quite young therefore [c] have little exposure to other OSes, let me try to unpack what Stephenson was getting at, *in context*.
The Hole Hawg is a dangerous and overpowered tool for most non-professionals. It is big and heavy. It can take on big tough jobs with ease, but its size and its brute power mean that it is not suitable for precision work. It has relatively few safety features, so that if used inexpertly, it will hurt its operator.
DIY stores are full of smaller, much less powerful tools. This is for good reasons:
• because for non-professional users, those smaller, less-powerful tools are much safer. A company which sells a tool to untrained users which tends to maim or kill them will go out of business.
• because smaller, less-powerful tools are better for smaller jobs, that a non-professional might undertake, such as hanging a picture, or putting up some shelves.
• professionals know to use the right tool for the job. Surgeons do not operate with chainsaws. Carpenters do not use axes.
The Hole Hawg, as described, is a clumsy tool that needs things attached to it in order to be used, and even then, you need to know the right way or it will hurt you.
Compare with a domestic drill with a pistol grip that is ready to use out of its case. Modern ones are cordless, increasing their convenience.
One is a tool for someone building a house; the other is a _better_…
One quote I've kept around for years is:
"But now every little thing--wristwatches, VCRs, stoves--is jammed with features, and every feature is useless without an interface. If you are like me, and like most other consumers, you have never used ninety percent of the available features on your microwave oven, VCR, or cellphone. You don't even know that these features exist. The small benefit they might bring you is outweighed by the sheer hassle of having to learn about them." -- [which I didn't keep a source for, and searched back to http://www.garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html "The Command Line in 2004" but that looks like a more modern post about an earlier Neal Stephenson article]
> "Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial?"
It's a blog post on the "Insiders" blog[1], they seem to appear weekly. Why comment on this at all "from the Linux side" in one breath advocating freedom of choice, in the next breath condemning everyone who doesn't value what you value, or who does things differently to you?
Which is it, freedom of choice, or mandatory complexity? Freedom of opinion, or "that is trivial and I am correct"?
[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/tag/windows-insider-program/
Interesting, I partly agree.
As an alternative, you can also view the lack of story in some games as a good thing, because it compels you to make up your own narrative.
"The answer is simple: Nethack does what computers do best - what computers were invented for. It hands you a symbolic representation of something, and lets you interact with it. The symbols are utterly mundane ... but the interaction is extraordinarily complicated. Interacting with the game of Nethack can be glorious, frustrating, hilarious, and satisfying. Like any great game, it's even fun to watch and talk about when played by others. There are probably more web pages of people telling their Nethack war stories than there are pages discussing the game itself." (http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/nethack/index.html)
Also have a look at the "Let's play" archive for X-Com on http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitle8zx0nomxzqc5?from=Main.LetsPlay
I actually find this version, with commentary added in 2004, somewhat more interesting than the original:
http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html
The 2004 comments are now of course 12 years old, so they're not much newer than the original text, but it's interesting to have two datapoints to draw a line between (1999 and 2004) and see where the trajectory of the future seemed to be headed over that period, versus where it actually landed.
per Wikipedia page:
With Neal Stephenson's permission, Garrett Birkel responded to "In the Beginning...was the Command Line" in 2004, bringing it up to date and critically discussing Stephenson's argument. Birkel's response is interspersed throughout the original text, which remains untouched.
http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/commandline/index.html