The occasionally-updated public notebook of Scott Nesbitt

Choices

There seems to be something of a cottage industry (for lack of a better term) in the online world. A cottage industry of people who vocally question the choices of others. Not only questioning those choices, but implying or outright stating that their choices are wrong.

Case in point: in early September, 2022 this post by blogger Paolo Amoroso had the dubious honour of being shared on Hacker News. I read the comments on the Hacker News post, and more than a couple of them were questioning Amoroso's choice of using a device running ChromeOS as his daily driver. Especially when he has better options.

I've been on the receiving end of that kind of criticism more times than I count. It doesn't sting, but there is more than just a bit of arrogance and condescension wrapped up in that criticism.

It's people applying their standards, their needs, their biases, their choices to you. It's them expecting your needs, your way of doing things to tightly dovetail with theirs. Not realizing, of course, that we all do things differently. That we all have different needs. I call that the power user fallacy. And it was on full display in some of the comments for that Hacker News post.

What you decide to use is your choice. Not someone else's. It's up to you to pick whatever technology that suits you best, even if that isn't what someone who purports to know better than you chooses. It's a matter of what works for you.

If your choice doesn't work for someone else, the problems don't lie with you. The problems, as Robert Fripp aptly said, lie elsewhere.